In 12.10 64bit with Gnome I have the same error message. It starts happening after a few days uptime and affects all applications started from the menus.
It is still possible to run the applications from the command line. top - 09:58:33 up 3 days, 19:18, 3 users, load average: 0.16, 0.19, 0.15 Tasks: 150 total, 2 running, 148 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie %Cpu0 : 0.7 us, 0.0 sy, 0.0 ni, 97.6 id, 1.7 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st %Cpu1 : 0.3 us, 0.0 sy, 0.0 ni, 98.6 id, 1.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st KiB Mem: 3750092 total, 3563064 used, 187028 free, 16716 buffers KiB Swap: 3888124 total, 1811224 used, 2076900 free, 337028 cached -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/240754 Title: Failed to fork (Cannot allocate memory) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/file-roller/+bug/240754/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs