Debian has both Armel & Armhf branches, for their "Net Installer" setup. Will these not work, to directly install Debian on the OrangePi systems? What else would it need. I see and have installed Debian-9.2.1 on a regular PC, and found Kodi 17.1 is directly available, and it works.
Will these not work, to directly install Debian on the OrangePi systems? What else would it need.
It won't boot. If you get it boot somehow - by finding appropriate boot loader, you will only get some very basic functions and exactly zero chances to install Kodi.
This Debian based system is the best what exists but even there you can't expect KODI will work out of the box. Usually not even on desktop PC this is not the case.