I've tried following the 16.04 guide, but using 18.04 and Leia, and a couple of observations.
1. Without pinning, ubuntu gets in a mess at the install of kodi and kodi-bin, it seems to take some "kodi" things from the ubuntu repo and some from the nightly ppa. After a few times hitting the same roadblock, I renamed sources.list while installing leia, then changed it back afterwards (pinning looked too much work for a small problem) --edit adding v17 ppa didn't have this issue
2. Probably expected, but libnfs8 libva1 (should I add the xenial repo?) python-software-properties are not found\wrong for 18.04
3. Lirc doesn't work as it did under 16.04, I removed it and let the kernel driver take over, but am having a few keymap issues -- edit
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=326366 was the answer
Obviously the guide is not written for either products I'm trying to install, so feel free to take the piss out of me for trying, or point out where I'm being an idiot.... Particularly if there is something obvious around using an HP MCE remote and fintec receiver I'm missing....