I LOVE the new Kodibuntu. TBH, everything just worked OOTB, which was so great I can't even tell you. I have a generic USB dongle and Addesso remote control that were recognized and worked right away. I would, however, like to change what a few of the buttons do. Is that possible some way?
An alternative is to use a add-on that does the mapping for you:
http://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:Keymap_Editor
I had some issues with using it, but it creates a "gen.xml" file that you can use to examine what the remote keys do if you wish to manually create your own.
Note: I had some major issues with the Lircmap.xml method - I found that XBMC needed to be restarted to re-read any changes to this file. There's no mention of that requirement on the Lircmap wiki page, so I don't know if that's still a requirement anymore.