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LineageOS Android Distribution

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Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#81

Post by dejawu »

I adore LineageOS and official support has now become my #1 factor in choosing a new phone. I've been running it on my Oneplus 5T which was already two generations behind when I bought it and there hasn't been a single day in over a year of ownership when I thought it wasn't fast or responsive enough. It's incredibly stable, there's no bloatware, and I get updates every night, which means I'm always on the latest security version.

If this thing ever breaks or dies I'll probably get a Zenfone 6 (I recall Asus actually openly distributed kernel sources with the express purpose of helping out the open source ROM community) and I'm excited to see how LineageOS runs on that.

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#82

Post by sergiomattei »

jasonjayr wrote: post #43
wongarsu wrote: post #3

LineageOS is great, my one complaint is that it is almost never available for the phones I own. You basically have to get phones according to their popularity in a certain subgroup: for example currently one HTC model and two LG models are supported, but close to everything from OnePlus. I know I can get unofficial builds, put apart from the sometimes quite severe missing features (calling or camera not or only parti…

I've mentioned this in another thread way back, but looking for a phone I could run LOS on, I worked out that starting here: https://stats.lineageos.org/ And drilling down to the most popular phone for your country seems to turn up a fairly well supported model. I ended up with a Moto Z2 Force ( https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/nash ) for pretty cheap, and I've been happy with it.

Currently reading on a Z2 Force running Lineage 16. Love this thing. So snappy!

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#83

Post by aaron_m04 »

izacus wrote: post #47
aynawn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Custom supported roms will continue to get security updates whereas oem roms get updates for maximum 3 years since phone release. From a security perspective, custom roms are still worth it.

Except that a huge chunk of Android CVEs I've seen are related to vendor code which does not get updated in custom ROMs either. And those are the painful ones, since drivers have kernel access. The security situation on Android is really less than ideal :/

That's concerning if true. Do you have a source?

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#84

Post by lucideer »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #62
lucideer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about simply unlocking the bootloader, that's as simple on most phones. I'm more referring to the general barriers put up to doing anything with your phone, either before unlocking (the OS itself is restrictively HTC-oriented) or after unlocking (S-ON, etc.) > Naturally HTC will from there on out decline responsibility for bricked phones, but which company doesn't? The fact that this is an accepted…

> The fact that this is an accepted norm is another part of the problem. Why "naturally"? Some manufacturers (like Google, Fairphone, Motorola on a limited number of phones) don't void the warranty, but even if none did: why do you think this "naturally" an acceptable thing other than it being the norm? Because I want to be allowed to install software that will damage the phone. Holding the phone manufacturer respons…

> Holding the phone manufacturer responsible for code I wrote is not in fact a natural thing to do.

I'm sorry but I'm really struggling to understand what you mean by this. What hardware should I be running the code I write on without fear of voiding the warranty.

If it's the fact I wrote the code that constitutes voiding the warranty, exactly who's code should we be permitted to run on hardware we've purchased? Only code which has been written by/provided by the manufacturer themselves?

What's the precedent for this absurd restriction?

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#85

Post by yumraj »

gregmac wrote: post #58
wongarsu wrote: post #3

LineageOS is great, my one complaint is that it is almost never available for the phones I own. You basically have to get phones according to their popularity in a certain subgroup: for example currently one HTC model and two LG models are supported, but close to everything from OnePlus. I know I can get unofficial builds, put apart from the sometimes quite severe missing features (calling or camera not or only parti…

> I don't want to trust random people on a forum to provide a build of an OS without including malware Why is it some communities still work like this? With Android dev, sometimes there's even some source on GitHub, but still a forum post is the main place to find the latest version, with the actual download from some questionable-looking download site. If you're lucky they include sha hashes at least. I've installed…

> > I don't want to trust random people on a forum to provide a build of an OS without including malware

I have always had the same issue with hackintosh and DD-WRT.

I run DD-WRT on a router, a kong build, but always have the lingering doubt about security.

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#86

Post by aesh2Xa1 »

giomasce wrote: post #39

LineageOS is very nice, also because it gives you the same experience of different devices. You know that it will be easy to have root, you know you won't have to learn again where every menu is, you don't expect too many surprises. I had a Fairphone 2 before and I used LineageOS on it. Then I decided to change it, got a second hand OnePlus 5, installed again LineageOS and it's just the same thing, except the phone i…

A significant aspect of the Lineage OS support on OnePlus devices is the vendor support for development.

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#87

Post by ivanfon »

wazoox wrote: post #53
jumbopapa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that completely de-googling the phone is somewhat hard because of Google Play Services being a prerequisite for many services. I understand that you can get by without it, but many people find that somewhat of a burden.

The main missing part is a good maps/Waze equivalent. I don't need anything else that's not available on F-Droid. Now I'm a GNU/Linux user of strict observance (depends only on Free Software!), so I probably don't have the same requirements as most.

Have you tried OsmAnd? (and if you have, what are your thoughts?)

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#88

Post by StavrosK »

phh wrote: post #79
gregmac wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to trust random people on a forum to provide a build of an OS without including malware Why is it some communities still work like this? With Android dev, sometimes there's even some source on GitHub, but still a forum post is the main place to find the latest version, with the actual download from some questionable-looking download site. If you're lucky they include sha hashes at least. I've installed…

Becauses the cost of doing a CI of Android is astronomical. (Especially for students) For my own ROM [1] I spent days and a hundred of euros optimizing the cost of building by trying various cloud providers (fwiw my current best spot is scaleway GP instance with 600GB local SSD). As of today, I'm still at 6€ per builds (For standard ROM devs, that should be cut down to 2€ I'd say). There is simply no way I can afford…

What's the expensive bit? Can't you rent a server and build on that?

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#89

Post by bscphil »

datalist wrote: post #31

I have used CyanogenMod, and later LineageOS, for quite some time and was pretty pleased with it. The problem is it seems to be past its prime. It dropped support for mainstream phones more and more and is currenly limited to either very old handsets or rather exotic manufacturers. The most recent Samsung S series they support is from 2014, almost six years ago. CM and LOS were also popular on the Nexus 4 and 5, thes…

> All of this coupled with long delays of moving to the most recent Android version. Many phone were still on Nougat LOS, when there was already Pie.

Yep, this is a pretty serious problem; even if you want to purchase a "supported" device, the odds you'll get feature upgrades aren't great. The list of currently supported devices is quite small, and many of those don't receive any maintainer edition - they're just letting the weekly automatic builds happen. So there's not really any hope that the Nexus 5X, for example, will ever get Android 9, let alone Android 10, with LineageOS. It's stuck on LineageOS 15.1.

If you want to go to less trusted ROM sources, like PixelExperience, you can do that... but unlike LineageOS where you're likely to get ignored by maintainers, trying to keep the phone on its latest version means that things are broken half the time. Currently the Nexus 5X is hardly usable with the PE ROM.

It's really a sucky experience currently if you want to buy a smartphone for longevity. Everything is built around the wasteful and expensive 2-year upgrade market, and since that's the most profitable, we're not likely to see improvements soon.

Re: LineageOS Android Distribution

#90

Post by mindslight »

lucideer wrote: post #9
wongarsu wrote: post #3

LineageOS is great, my one complaint is that it is almost never available for the phones I own. You basically have to get phones according to their popularity in a certain subgroup: for example currently one HTC model and two LG models are supported, but close to everything from OnePlus. I know I can get unofficial builds, put apart from the sometimes quite severe missing features (calling or camera not or only parti…

While popularity of phones plays some part, mostly this is down to the manufacturers. HTC are well-known for providing locked-down devices; even if you're looking for a near-stock experience, HTC tends not to be recommended. Samsung is similar in this regard, though they get away with it somewhat more than HTC due to demand. In short, don't complain to/about Lineage. Vote with your pocket and buy more open phones.

But yet Samsung is the only LOS option that doesn't have Qualcomm's broken-by-design integrated baseband/application processors.

I'm certainly not trying to fanboy here (Samsung cameras suck [0]), just pointing out that all manufacturers are intrinsically inclined to deploy some user-hostile features. "Voting" with your wallet doesn't particularly move their needles.

[0] More precisely their software support sucks, making the picture quality terrible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21082561

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