In early March, the project that was previously known as XBMC released a v18.6 of its software on which other projects such as FreeELEC 9.2.1. For a few hours we have a new version of the multimedia center, a Kodi 18.7 which continues under the code name "Leia" and has introduced a handful of new features. But, as a point version, most of these new features are corrections and small changes to make everything work better.
As we read in the release note for this version, they have introduced improvements in everything a little, among which we have corrections in the audio and improvements in the reproduction, interface, the music section, networks and the support for addons has been improved. Below you have the full list of news which has arrived together with Kodi «Leia» 18.7.
Kodi 18.7 Leia highlights
- Audio:
- Solution to not reset the volume set by the user (Android).
- Multichannel audio track support has been fixed.
- Playback / Screen:
- Fixes in Bluray subtitle language recognition.
- Fixes the playback of bus encrypted Bluray discs.
- Improved library management for plugins if media source is removed.
- Now use JNI instead of NDK for MediaCodec (Android).
- Additional work on max width and height / vertical scrolling (Android).
- Real-time management of TS transmissions has been corrected.
- Interface / Image and sensations:
- Fixed clock icons not displaying when content type is not set (Estouchy).
- Fixed navigation in skinsettings (Estuary).
- Fix crash in favorites dialog.
- Applied secure area inserts to Kodi GUI (iOS).
- Corrections around focus after touch action.
- Improvements around the dialogue / handling of the toast.
- Fixed behavior when accessing blocked media sources.
- Music:
- Corrections around the handling of the library of the "isalbumartist" field.
- Fix expansion of .ISO images to avoid GUI freezes.
- Now it makes sure that the album artist is not blank when parsing.
- Creation system:
- Fixed downloading dependencies from mirrors (Windows).
- Library updates: bump gnutls (3.6.11.1) and nettle (3.5.1).
- RRP:
- Fixed EPG corruption when adding new channels at startup.
- Net:
- Improved proxy credential management.
- Fix for empty proxy fields.
- Addons:
- Fix crash if there is an incompatible VFS plugin.
- Fixed title display for compressed package directories.
- Fixes around plugin settings folder names.
- Subtitle:
- Fixes around decoding HTML escape characters.
- Fixed SMI (SAMI) subtitles and cited start tags.
- Profiles:
- Solutions for problems related to profile change.
- Fixes to save lock preferences (master lock, video window lock, etc.).
- Others / General:
- Added "Swiss German" and "Portuguese (Brazil)" to language codes.
- Fix to avoid assertion in tinyxml.
- Fixed stack overflow when trying to find NFO files in a RAR archive.
- Implemented range checking in URIUtils :: resolvePath.
- Support for extended local headers implemented in ZIP files used by some parsers.
How to install Kodi on Linux
We can install Kodi 18.7 and all future versions in different ways. In Linux, the Flatpak version stands out that we can install directly by clicking on this link if our distribution includes support or we have added it. Yes indeed, v18.7 of the software has not arrived yet. Neither has the Snap version arrived, more specifically an unofficial one that they create from the project's repository that can be installed by opening a terminal and typing the command "sudo snap install mir-kiosk-kodi" (without the quotes).
The most official thing the project offers is a repository that can be used on distributions like Debian or Ubuntu. To add and install Kodi we have to open a terminal and type the following:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa sudo apt update sudo apt install kodi
Given that Kodi 19 is right around the cornerWe can't be sure if this will be the case, but the next version is expected to be a Kodi 18.8, also Leia, which will continue to fix bugs and improve performance.