Hey Andrew!

 AL> I'm assuming the physical RAM size is actually 32GiB

----- ":read !free --si -h" starts
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            32G        110M         32G        778K         25M         32G
Swap:            0B          0B          0B
----- ":read !free --si -h" ends

I believe that is 'better' output.

 AL> with the system eating some amount of it for use as video RAM,
 AL> BIOS shadowing, etc.

Also it was/is a snapshot while the system is more or less idling.  Also, also,
I used to load small development systems in 2G ramdisks so that would also have
an impact on the above numbers.

 AL> In any case, it appears you have plenty available.

Definetly overkill.  I can easily live with far less.  I think the optimal
would be 8G and even that is overkill on most days.  There have been times
where 8G is ideal.

However if I were running a number of virtual development systems
simultaneously I could see me wanting/using 32G without trying too hard.  So
far that hasn't been an issue.

Life is good,
Maurice

... Don't cry for me I have vi.
--- GNU bash, version 4.4.12(1)-release (x86_64-silvermont-linux-gnu)