Not necessarily, if I allocate 8GB to a VM, my systems still runs smoothly even when I'm already using 10GB (I have 16GB).
One problem is that the VM won't clean up the RAM properly but the swap can handle that quite nicely actually. And I never utilize 16GB of ram, 8 would be more then enough for me and ram is really cheap these days (even on macs).
2 windows with 20-40 tabs each. Doesn't take up that much ram (less then 2GB). I never have more then 2 Windows of any application (e.g. Only 2 terminal Windows) because it breaks the shortcut to get to the previous window
