LibreELEC 12.2 is now available, delivering Kodi Omega v21.2+ along with a round of hardware-focused improvements. The update bumps Linux kernels and display components for better compatibility with newer Intel systems while keeping Raspberry Pi devices in sync with RPiOS. Kodi itself includes a handful of small tweaks backported from upstream since the 21.2 release, and no 21.3 update is planned.
One major change is the removal of the long-surviving Nvidia Legacy 340.xx driver from the Generic-Legacy build. Nvidia abandoned it years ago, but LibreELEC kept it running until the latest Xorg release finally broke compatibility.
Sadly, this leaves many older Nvidia cards unsupported in LibreELEC going forward. The team has evaluated the open-source Nouveau driver, but it still causes playback problems and is not yet a true solution. The advice remains the same: avoid Nvidia GPUs if you plan to run LibreELEC.
Another important shift affects Tvheadend users. The older v4.2 release, unsupported since 2019, is gone from the repository. LibreELEC now recommends moving to v4.3, which Tvheadend developers consider a stable rolling release. There is no direct upgrade path, so users must install v4.3 from scratch and reconfigure their setups.
Support changes also affect NXP’s iMX6 and iMX8 chips along with Qualcomm hardware. While the code is still in the project, official builds are no longer being produced. These platforms saw limited adoption in industrial gear and tablets but have very few active LibreELEC installations today.
Updating is straightforward for most x86_64 users on LibreELEC 12.0 or 11.0. You can use the settings add-on or drop the update file into the .update folder. ARM users have a more complex path. Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 have moved from ‘arm’ to ‘aarch64’ userspace, which requires manually placing the new image file in the .update directory.
Widevine users will also need to delete old DRM libraries so new aarch64 versions can be downloaded. If you run Docker containers outside of LinuxServer.io add-ons, you will need to replace your arm images with aarch64-compatible ones after updating.
LibreELEC remains a Linux distribution designed solely to run Kodi. The 12.2 release continues that mission while making it clear that the future of Nvidia GPU support on the platform is uncertain.
