[noggin]

Have you tried possibly looking into using XBMCbuntu and installing all the things you have installed. There are linux versions of each. I'd either try that out, or find out where you memory's going. Have you even investigated that? It may not be XBMC that's eating memory, but something definitely has a memory leak.

I thought if you install xbmcbuntu that's all you got was xbmc.. Nothing else. I didn't know you could run other programs too

XBMCbuntu is effectively XBMC installed alongside Ubuntu, so you can either fire up XBMC in its own session or run an Ubuntu desktop.

OpenElec is much lighter, and a custom Linux distro designed pretty much purely for XBMC (though it includes additional services like TVHeanded backends etc.) and you don't have the option of running a desktop.