[POINTS]

yeah, no debug..
Anyway, I suspect the problem is alchemist_beta. Kodi is build for "stable" alchemist, not against the beta channel.

Yeah, I noticed that the source file is for "alchemist". Anyway, I figured out the problem was caused by the libudev1 package. Removing it fixed Kodi not starting on my system:

Code:

sudo apt-get remove --purge libudev1

I think I picked up that package when I was installing an emulator or pipelight or something else. Strange thing is, Kodi is linked libudev0 not libudev1 and the libraries do not share any files so I'm not sure what the deal was. Maybe Kodi launches something that picks whatever libudev it can find on the system and it causes conflicts?

If you want to reproduce the problem, you can download and install the libudev1 package from the debian repository: https://packages.debian.org/jessie/amd64...1/download. Installing that package makes the problem pop right up for me.

More info... (You probably know this already). Kodi on my Ubuntu 14.10 machines uses libudev1. SteamOS has libudev0 available but does not have libudev1.