LibreELEC has just released version 12.2 of its lightweight, Kodi-based media center OS. Built around Kodi Omega 21.2, this release focuses heavily on keeping things running smoothly on modern and recent Intel systems, as well as making sure Raspberry Pi boards stay aligned with the latest RPiOS updates.
There are also a few backported tweaks from Kodi’s own development, but no 21.3 release is planned—so this is the one to get.
One of the more notable changes is the end of the road for the long-serving Nvidia Legacy 340.xx driver. It’s been hanging on for six years after Nvidia officially stopped supporting it, but with the latest Xorg updates, it simply won’t compile anymore. That means older Nvidia cards, which still make up a surprisingly large chunk of active LibreELEC installs, are now out of luck.
The developers say they’ve looked into using the open-source Nouveau driver, but for video playback, it’s more trouble than it’s worth—so for now, Nvidia GPU support remains uncertain. Their advice is simple – avoid buying Nvidia cards for LibreELEC use.
On the TV streaming side, Tvheadend v4.3 has now become the standard in LibreELEC 12.2. The older v4.2 branch hasn’t been maintained since 2019 and is no longer available from the official repo. If you’re still on v4.2, there’s no direct upgrade path—you’ll need to install v4.3 fresh and reconfigure from scratch.
Device support is also seeing some pruning. Limited builds for NXP iMX6/iMX8 and Qualcomm hardware, first introduced back in 2018, aren’t getting official releases anymore. The code is still in the tree, but with so few active installs—and most of those being custom-built—official images are no longer worth the resources to maintain.
For those planning to update, the process depends on what you’re running now. If you’re already on LibreELEC 12.0 or 11.0 on x86_64, it’s business as usual—update through the settings add-on or drop the file into “/storage/.update.”
ARM users on newer Raspberry Pi boards will need to note the shift from ‘arm’ to ‘aarch64’ userspace, which also means re-downloading Widevine libraries for DRM services like Netflix and Prime Video. And if you’re still rocking a pre-10.x install, you’re looking at a clean install thanks to the Python 3 changes that came with Kodi 19.
The LibreELEC team is also reminding users to make backups before upgrading—Kodi upgrades fine, but downgrades can be messy. For more information, see the announcement.
