Kodi has the IR stuff built in from what I remember. At least on windows it did years ago. You just need a “media remote” at one point called windows media remote. It’s a usb or receiver with a regular IR remote.
After a quick google here is a list I found.
Ohh man, i am right there with you. It was the same for me with CS however I already had it installed. I wanted to update to 1.6 but I had steam installed and it forced me to update steam before I could update CS. I know they had a lot of growing pains but they eventually did it right due to our struggle.