In the 4(?) days since I got my first anti-adblock popover, I've completely stopped watching random videos. My few favorite channels I've watched in incognito without harrassment, and the only thing I've noticed is having more time for other things.
If those content providers were on some other platform, I'd go there, but that's honestly asking a lot of them for a small slice of their subscribers.
There’s mythtv, but it’s significantly more complicated than kodi and doesn’t have the streaming plugins. IME, mythtv makes a nice backend for Kodi, especially if you want to capture live TV OTA/cable. For just watching stuff, Kodi is great. It doesn’t really honor any file hierarchy you might set up under its “Movies” or “Music” tabs, but you’ll find that structure preserved in “Browser.”
I’ve found OSMC, which is just a dedicated OS wrapper around Kodi, a little wonky, but that could be just me. I’m used to ssh-ing in to systems to maintain them, and it took me a long time to understand OSMC’s connman network manager. I think it’s probably fine if you intend to interact only though Kodi’s on-screen controls, but osmc feels like a ‘weird’ linux. Doesn’t even log to /var/log/syslog