Tvheadend

I just came across and article entitled "14 Best Kodi Alternatives Worth Giving a Go Today" at https://cyberogism.com/2016/10/kodi-alternatives/ and it got me to wondering if any of those other than OSMC, OpenELEC, or Phoenix (any NOT Kodi-based) can be used as a frontend for TVHeadend, or if there are any other recommended frontends that are functionally similar to Kodi, but not nearly as buggy.

I only ask because Kodi frustrates the hell out of me. Every new version seems to break something important, and maybe it will get fixed by the next version and maybe it won't. The new version "Krypton" breaks the ability to see Closed Captions on many North American ATSC channels, something that is quite helpful even if you're not very hearing-impared when watching programs with hard-to-understand speech, thick accents, etc. Kodi never really implemented ATSC closed captions properly (it did not display special characters, italicized text, underlined text, etc. properly) but at least the subtitles were there in previous versions, now they are missing on many network channels. In the previous version, "Jarvis", the way TVHeadend timers were displayed was broken. And so it goes, each version seems to introduce some new bug that really affects many users' enjoyment of the software.

So I started to wonder, does everyone that uses TVHeadEnd use Kodi (or, alternately, a barebones viewer such as VLC), or is there some other decent frontend that will work with TVHeadEnd and that displays a program guide, etc.?

In my particular case, my top criteria is that the software runs under Linux (or preferably is cross-platform, since I also have an OS X system) and is free, at least insofar as it can be used with TVHeadEnd. And that it displays ATSC closed captions correctly, and that it will recognize button presses from a MCE compatible remote. I don't really care if it supports addons, or skins, or anything like that, I would just like to find something reliable that works as a frontend with TVHeadend as the backend, that is NOT based on Kodi/XBMC (or if it IS forked from Kodi, it was forked from Kodi Isengard which was about the last version that really worked halfway well). I am definitely not looking for a distro that takes over your computer, like OpenELEC or LibreELEC; I want something that will run under standard Ubuntu if possible. I would have to be really, truly desperate to ever run Windows again. But others may have different criteria, so don't be afraid to mention something even if it doesn't tick all my boxes. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.