Need advice on replacing OpenElec on Intel NUC

I need the input of the braintrust on picking a replacement OS/platform for my four year old i3 based NUC that is running an older OpenElec release.

I finally updated my Mac to the latest Kodi 17 version and am pretty impressed… it’s clearly time to update the Kodi release on the NUC which is running all the way back on Gotham. I haven’t updated it since I haven’t needed any new features.

OpenElec looks like it’s struggling to keep up with Kodi releases. I see that they did release a version in early 2017 but it is based on Kodi 16? I’d really like to be on the latest if possible.

What are my other alternatives? I’ve run XBMC on Windows before and was not very happy with the experience. All I use the NUC for is XBMC as I have other media devices for everything else. The NUC is connected to a pretty good Denon AVR and a nice 65″ Panasonic Plasma. I play movies on the NUC to as accurately as possible reproduce the original Blu-rays I rip from.

Thanks for any input from the community.