[noggin]

I think most of us using S905 boxes for Kodi - and just for Kodi - ignore Android and just run LibreElec - so the Android version is kind of irrelevant to us.

Thanks for the help, I've read a few posts which suggest this. So this is basically a dual-bootable (loaded from memory card) cut-down/tailored version of Android designed with Kodi in mind, so the device boots straight into Kodi?

No - this isn't Android at all. Instead it is LibreElec - which is a very lightweight Linux (not Android) operating system optimised to provide only what Kodi needs to run and very little else. As such it takes up tiny amounts of storage space, and has very low overheads. You are right that it boots straight into Kodi.

Some people dual-boot with LibreElec on a uSD card, and Android on the internal storage, some of us see no point in keeping Android (it's not like you'll get HD Netflix etc.) on the internal flash and install LibreElec to that instead.

Which would presumably mean that without various installed bloatware, the difference between 8GB and 16GB local memory is pretty much irrelevant too. So I should probably opt for the S905X version?

Yes - 8GB is more than enough to store LibreElec and a reasonably large library. You can connect USB storage for local library playback, or network to network storage if your content is on a NAS.

If I use LibreElec, can I still run the usual tools that I'm used to - for example ES File Explorer, or apps to let the device be seen as an SMB share on my local network so I can easily manipulate its files over the LAN or WLAN? Sorry for the noob questions.

As LibreElec isn't running Android you don't have Android apps available. However LibreElec has built in file management utilities, and because it is based on Linux, you may find you need to use these less, as LibreElec will mount external storage devices with few problems.

LibreElec also includes some useful add-ons of its own - and because it's Linux, not Android, these can be more useful. Examples include - proper support for DVB USB (*) tuners and a TV Headend PVR backend (so you can use your LibreElec install as an OTA TV PVR as well as just a client to a remote PVR backend)

(As long as I can turn off the daft front-panel LED light-strip anyway! )

Can't help you with that...


(*) Because LibreElec often has to run on older kernels on S905 boxes, you may find some DVB USB tuners are unsupported, or you have to use specific builds that include them. (This is the curse of Android. It runs on older kernels, so many manufacturers haven't kept their kernels up to date, which has a knock on for Linux)