Help a Newbie Out Please!!

I have a toshiba laptop I am wanting to use XBMC or Boxee on. I did a clean install of both Ubuntu 11.10 and 10.04 .. both of them work great! But I can not get either one to run Boxee 1.5 so I tried XBMC and it works but not stable. XBMC hangs alot and wont install several addons I need. Boxee starts up with a black screen and then closes nothing else. I did a clean installation each time I changed ubuntu versions.


I am at a loss here and need help.
Here is my specs on the laptop.
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/tosh...-31813548.html