Many people have Android TV on their TVs, or boxes like Nvidia Shield.

While a Raspberry Pi is a pretty simple way to get Linux/Kodi on the TV, getting it to integrate well is a whole other story. (Remotes, CEC, other services like Netflix, etc.)

I'm your typical Linux hacker of 20 years, but even I switched from Raspberry Pi to Nvidia Shield a couple years ago because the pain of using and maintaining it is so much lower for an interface that should be as simple as "pick and play".

Funny you should mention that. CEC integration is much better on the Pi than on the shield IME. Kodi can't detect other CEC devices and allow to configure its behaviour on the shield (like pause video when switching channels on the TV, control what to do when sleeping, etc).

Likewise with remotes, they work as well, if not better, on the Pi (you can even solder an IR receiver or emitter if you want).

Of course, Netflix is another story, but that's because of DRM, and I decided long ago I wouldn't use any service with DRM.

For me, I use a Shield because of the technicals. It‘s currently the most complete solution if you want dolby vision/atmos capable playback with local stuff (plex/kodi) and streaming services. The shield pro 2019 is also the only box that manages to play 100gb+ 4K stuff without issues. Most people don‘t care about that though.

Android TV already has apps that do a much better job than Kodi, so the question remains.

To pick one of your examples, Netflix has its own app.

Netflix has a better app to use the Netflix service, but it's totally useless for our own collection.

Kodi is easily the best game in town to consume self-hosted media. Or, at least navigate it.

I run it on an Android TV. I'm thinking of plugging small device running Linux though, like a raspberry pi because my tv (a sony from 2015) is not maintained anymore as the last update introduced a huge amount of bugs (the tv can't play a lot of h264 videos, h263 videos doesn't work at all).

This is why my next TV will just be a 43" monitor, not anything "smart". After all that's how I am using my current TV set, which does not even have a DVB tuner. Since modern TVs are effectively computers that are controlled with a remote control, I might as well use a real computer and manage myself the software that it runs.

Easy to install and use on several Android TV boxes out there. NVIDIA Shield perhaps?

Cause there are hundreds of cheap android TV boxes one can buy which don't run Linux. Also kodi for android runs on amazon's fire sticks and Googles new chromecast (the Google tv one)

You can use streaming apps on the same device not so with linux. On Kodi android you can even get 4k hdr netflix with the input steam addon.

Just to add what others said, could also run it on android tables. Sadly, the linux-running tablet options aver very limited.