OUT OF MEMORY error

M

marthamydear

Guest
I've got Petra installed on my computer and do not have Windows on the hard drive. However I wanted to run a favorite
Windows program that I have felt comfortable for years using, "Microsoft Picture It! 99." So I installed WINE and it
"sort of" allows the MS program to work but in many ways it is impaired as to its functions. The big problem is that whenever I launch it I get a popup, "OUT OF MEMORY."

In TERMINAL I initiated the free -m and df -h commands and got the following:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 487 435 51 0 12 253
-/+ buffers/cache: 169 317
Swap: 501 22 479
marthamartha ~ $ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 37G 6.5G 28G 19% /
none 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 232M 4.0K 232M 1% /dev
tmpfs 49M 1.2M 48M 3% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 244M 684K 244M 1% /run/shm
none 100M 8.0K 100M 1% /run/user

Is there any clue from this info as to what's happening? I am very green. Thank you.
 


If you want to run Microsoft software, then run windows - the platform it's developed to run on.

That program is not mentioned on wine's appdb so like most MS apps it's probably near impossible to get working.

wine itself is in fact a mess which you will be better of avoiding. Find free replacement native apps and migrate completely to a free system (or just go back to running windows).
 
I wish I could. So far I have tried so many graphic manipulation programs offered on Linux and their all cumbersome and clumsy. As for using Windows, I wish I could afford Bill's newest but he doesn't support XP and I still need to buy groceries.
 
Your problem most probably arises from the virtual address space, limited to 4GB for 32 bit applications, which is occupied by both the OS and the Wine emulator, and only the remaining space is available to the application itself. It might help to use a 64 bit OS, Wine, and a 64 bit version of the Windows application, i.e. a matter of availability of such 64 bit components.
 
Arochester I appreciate your suggestion. I did indeed download the trial version of Crossover and, although it seemed to perform a little more smoothly, it still had functional flaws and the continuous "Out of Memory" annunciation.

Ryanvade I thank you for your hypothesis too. I don't think this ol' laptop is 64-bit capable, but I sure will check into it.

Thanks guys.
 
Martha, what do you mainly use 'Picture It!' for?
I've never heard of it before, so I'm not sure exactly what type of program it is.. From the name it sounds like a photo editing program. But is it mainly for editing/enhancing images? Or is it one of those print-layout type programs that allows you to layout your photos before you print them? Or a combination of both?

Going a little off topic: From its name alone, it sounds like one of those terrible bloat-ware programs that comes bundled for free with a new windows PC, or with a digital camera, or some other gadget. And as much as some of those programs might make certain tasks simple for new users, they do tend to be resource hogs at the best of times. So if it falls under that category, I'm not surprised that it won't run with Wine! Heh heh! XD

Going back on-topic, the suggestion of trying to run the program with Wine on a 64 bit system might be a good one. But from what you've posted, it doesn't sound like that is possible for you. So the only other option you have would be to explore any alternative programs that are available on the Linux platform.

Depending on what you use 'Picture It!' for, here are some of my software recommendations for graphics work (which you may or may not have tried already):

For general photo/image editing on Linux, you can't beat Gimp IMHO. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it is an extremely powerful editor; especially when you learn how to use it properly. Krita is another really good, powerful image editor too. Pinta is another notable one. Not quite as good, but it's a cross-platform clone of Paint.NET and might be a bit more familiar to you.

For print layouts, there are less options available on Linux. The best program I've found so far for laying out photos to print is the aptly named Photoprint. Otherwise Scribus (free DTP program) can be used to design/layout things for print.

Another program I use from time to time is Posterazor, which allows you to turn photos/images into huge, multi-page posters. Great for creating posters from large, hi-res images.

If you want a really lightweight solution for your image editing needs and you are comfortable using the command line, there is Imagemagick - A suite of command line tools which can be used to manipulate images in a number of different ways: combine/join, overlay, crop, scale/resize, rotate, apply effects, even generate images from scratch!

You can achieve all kinds of things with Imagemagick, but you need to know exactly what you want to do to the image/s and you have to script everything.
But to make things easier there are collections of scripts available on the web.... like these:
http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/

But sometimes you need to do some tweaking to parameters to get the results you want. Other times you are better off loading something like Gimp and making the changes manually! Heh heh!

Imagemagick is most useful when you have a large batch of images in a directory that you want to process in the same way. In those cases, you simply write a script to process the images and leave it to run in the background so you can get on with other stuff!

Then of course there are things like Inkscape and Xara for SVG/vector graphics, Synfig for vector graphics and 2D animations and Blender for 3D graphics/animations and logos.
 
I would take JasKinasis' advice very seriously (as well as everyone else's). Linux offers many graphics programs which are right on par if not better than their Windows counterparts. But if you MUST have the PictureIt program, I would suggest installing VirtualBox and install your version of Windows in that so you can run it. Again, Linux' graphics programs are very good and superior to the windows ones. You just have to learn how to use them. If you need help, then that's what you have this website for. :)

Regards
Jim
 
From the results of your free -m output it's evident, if I'm reading it correctly, that you are at the low end of required memory. Mint's web site recommends "512 MB RAM (1GB recommended for a comfortable usage)."

Depending on the desktop environment you chose, there isn't much physical memory left to run applications.
 

Staff online


Top