The easier way was to just drop the update .tar file into the 'updates' samba share on the OE box and reboot. Clean reinstall doesn't achieve much if you dirty it up straight away by restoring everything from the backup
Newbie here, and just did this to install Libreelec (came over from an old test version of OE based on Kodi 15.2 on an ASRock BeeBox N3000). I was just holding off until a stable v. 8 of LE came out, but I started getting some freezes. Hopefully moving over here will iron out any problems. Everything is looking good so far.