eg Running fullscreen BBC news live in firefox with flash player on an Ubuntu guest here is a short log of virtual and resident memory usage:- patrick:~ patrick$ while true; do ps vax | grep VirtualBoxVM | grep -v grep | awk '{print $7" "$8}'; sleep 60; done remote desktop connection active 1654840 637116 1655096 637372 1655096 637372 1655096 637372 1655088 640128 1655088 644524 1663800 649460 1663800 653516 1671472 658532 remote desktop connection closed 1679664 664844 1679664 664844 1679664 664844 1679664 664844 1679664 664844 remote desktop connection active 1679664 666396 1679664 668220 1679664 668728 1679664 669732 1679664 671180 1687856 672204 1687856 672780 1687856 675772 stop news player 1687864 676352 1687864 676352 1687864 676352 1687864 676352 1687864 676352