[nickr]

Not for the average media PC.

And you are thinking very 1990s there.

Perhaps the reason linux doesn't download stuff for you is that most drivers are built in to the kernel already.

Yeah there are probably printers, scanners, oddball USB devices, that don't have linu drivers, but that doesn't relate to a kodi machine.

In short, and of course in my opinion the answer to the question "Best version of windows for Kodi?" is "LibreELEC".

[ashlar]

In short, and of course in my opinion the answer to the question "Best version of windows for Kodi?" is "LibreELEC".

Best Windows version for Kodi is 10. If you want the best picture possible install the DSPlayer version, as it has more advanced scaler routines available through madVR.
To the person who was asking about MCE remote, yes, it works just fine under 10. Personally I consider EventGhost reason enough to keep on using Windows for HTPC.

[Bense]

...in this regard than Windows 7 (which is 2009 tech after all). Microsoft still supports Windows 7 for a few years so I wouldn't worry about it yet, but don't discount it.

I couldn't hold my tongue. What tech has actually changed since 2009? Zoom out and look at it from a macroscopic level.

What are the inputs/outputs for anything that belongs on forums.kodi.tv?
* Ethernet I/O
* Wi-Fi I/O
* Keyboard, Mouse, Remote (whether IR or radio transmitted), Game Controller Input
* Display Output
* Image/Video Capturing
* Optical Disc I/O

The only thing that has really changed since 2009 is maybe Wi-Fi, and maybe display resolution. But display rez can easily be debated. For example, in Christmas 2003, my freshman year in college; I upgraded my Asus A7A266 with AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1200 MHz + Nvidia TNT2 for an Asus A7N8X motherboard with AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 'barton' with an Nvidia Geforce 3, that I 'tricked out' with a DVI-I -> VGA adapter, and was running dual 21" CRT monitors, each @ 2048x1536.

That's 6291456 pixels, which is over three times that over 1080p!

Desktop ethernet is still capped at gigabit.
Bleeding edge, fast Wi-Fi cards are about $23 shipped from China on eBay.
H264, H265 hardware decoder ASICs are cheap. Most of the time they come included on devices. But for those that don't have them, something like a Broadcom BCM70015 is cheap nowadays.

A lot of software hit a peak around 2012 or so. Then it's like all the software companies looked at each other and said "Oh shit... what did we just do? How are we supposed to make money now that we've successfully implemented nearly every conceivable feature?"

##########################################

My point is, it's really not 'old tech'. My advice for Kodi would be to just install whichever you're more comfortable with, disable all antivirus, disable microsoft defender, disable any of those 'safety features'. Get whatever SSD is on sale, enable WakeOnLan, and make absolutely sure that you are not using a software video decoder (Your CPU) to decode video that you've already got a hardware decoder.

I run Windows 8.1 enterprise with classic start, and I've manually disabled a plethora of services, including defender, windows search, system protection and all that crap. Hope that helpz

[bry]

@Bense from thh?

[ThePoetStefan]

If it works why update the system unless you need security Windows updates, If so I on a personal note would skip 10 and go for win 8.1 or why not OpenElec the linux variant.