Thanks! Your feedback is much appreciated :)
Running PixelCNC under any kind of Windows emulation or virtual machine, or via other operating systems, is not something that's currently supported at the moment. It should be run on a machine that's running Windows natively for maximum compatibility and performance. Some users have had varying levels of success running PixelCNC from other operating systems via Windows virtual-machine or emulation but that is beyond my purview.
The majority of PixelCNC is developed with cross-platform compatibility in mind but due to the extra work that would be involved in setting up to actually build, test, and release Linux/Mac versions the implementation of CAM features/functionality and bugfixes currently takes precedent among the list of priorities. Cross-platform support is definitely on the radar but it could be another year before that comes to be a reality. Ideally this would be something to tackle either toward the end of the alpha phase or in the beta phase - and we're about ~60% the way to beta. The next big feature coming down the pipe is the canvas system, which will allow users to load multiple images/models simultaneously into one project and position/scale/rotate/etc them as individual elements on a single 'canvas' off which toolpaths are generated. That will mark the transition to beta.
With that said, I'm curious what images you're trying to load into PixelCNC that are causing a crash. If you could email them to charlie@deftware.org we should be able to get that squared away pretty quick. :)