[noggin]

I've been running Coreelec on an Odroid N2+ 4GB for a year and a half now, and performance is fine, but I don't find CE to be all that reliable or stable, and I'm tired of having to unplug the Odroid when it freezes. Are there any drawbacks to replacing CE with Ubuntu or some other version of Linux and installing Kodi on it? Anyone have any other setups they'd recommend? I'd be down to try Android if that makes the most sense, but I'd prefer something not made by Google. The most important thing for me is the ability to play movies in HDR with Atmos, and I'd obviously like to keep things snappy in the UI (I'm not running any fancy skins or anything, if that matters).

I also have an aging Raspberry Pi Zero W running Homebridge and Pi Hole, and it'd be great if I could get rid of it and run those things plus Kodi on one device, but given how unreliable CE has been for me, it hasn't made sense to consolidate.

I'll add another voice to the 'CoreElec IS reliable' group. If you are having issues with freezing etc. that suggests you may have an issue with hardware or power. What PSU are you using?  The N2+ is relatively power-hungry - I use ODroid's official UK PSU with my N2 (I don't have an N2+) and it's fine.

Are these freezes micro-stutters or are they total lock-ups that require a reboot?

Are you using eMMC or a Micro SD card?  If the latter - have you tried replacing the uSD card? (In some installs uSD cards have a finite life and fail in annoying ways).

A general Ubuntu install with Kodi will probably have no hardware video acceleration (I don't think the AMLogic stuff CE uses is in Mainline Linux?) - so you'll be left only able to play the stuff that can be decoded by the N2+ CPU in software.  Not sure what Android's state is on AMLogic.