Installation on Mac
If you are on a Mac, you need the version for “OS X hosts.” VirtualBox must be installed before it can be used. When you mount the DMG, you must then run the VirtualBox installer, which will place VirtualBox into your Applications folder. If you are running Catalina or earlier, VirtualBox is safe to run on a Mac. You do need to keep in mind the amount of RAM needed for both the guest OS and the host OS.
Is VirtualBox Safe?
VirtualBox is hypervisor software that can run and administer one or more virtual guest computers inside a host computer. Running their malware inside a virtual machine allowed them to hide it from the prying eyes of security software on the host.
Virtual Machine Memory Usage
No. When the virtual machine is off or in suspend/pause state it only consumes disk space. It doesn’t use any memory or CPU. the RAM assigned to the VM will only be used when you fire up the VM and should be freed once you power it down. Same for the RAM VirtualBox itself uses to run, which should be freed when you exit the VirtualBox application itself.
Performance Issues on Windows
This is because a service that uses Microsoft Hyper-V is running on your host PC. Normally Hyper-V blocks Virtualbox. But your PC is of the type and OS where Virtualbox can attempt to run the guest using the Hyper-V engine. This arrangement is still being developed and isn’t 100% yet.