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LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

lineageos.org

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Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#111

Post by gsnedders »

codedokode wrote: post #109
g_p wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're spot on here. To also add, some (most!) vendors make dirty hacks to the kernel source, as they maintain it as a standalone tree for the most-part. Wired the headphone jack the wrong way around? Don't bother with a new PCB revision, as deadlines are too tight, and getting things perfect seems to have no place; just hack at the driver code in a messy way and change the outputs! It's not like you're ever going to…

If the vendor is patching kernel they probably must release their patches and proprietary drivers as GPL requires (regarding drivers they could avoid this by moving important parts into userspace).

There's two things that happen: one is adding more hacks in the kernel that while required to be released under the GPL (and sometimes are, sometimes aren't!) are never going to reach the mainline kernel in a thousand years because they are way too hacky.

The other is creating userspace blobs that get passed void* from the kernel containing (kernel) internal data structures. The problem then comes about when the kernel changes those data structures.

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#112

Post by josteink »

codedokode wrote: post #108
josteink wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something I've wondered about: why does Android require you flash a ROM to update the system? Let me answer that by picking the question apart: 1. To update the system, you need access to write actual system-files. You need system-level access. 2. Android is built entirely up on a "user-space" model where permissions are granted to apps, and almost no apps have system-level access. 3. On rooted phones you can allow…

There is a "fastboot" [1] tool from Google that interacts with phone bootloaders that support it and can be used to flash the ROM. > There's no technical difference between that and just copying files to a usually write-protected partition. "Flashing" usually means "uploading" a filesystem image onto a partition, not copying single files. [1] https://source.android.com/source/running.html#booting-into-...

Fastboot is a interface/protocol to talk to the bootloader, in order to flash images to select partitions. On select phones. And it requires an external device to run the process. So it can't be self-hosted.

All that technical whizbang doesn't change or even address the underlying problem: What you boot still needs to be 100% device specific.

There's no UEFI/BIOS on ARM to help bootstrap the boot process.

Also: When you flash custom roms on Android, you format and then unzip a file onto the system partition. Not that I see how that's technically any different from flashing a FS-image, but if it matters to you, now you know.

In conclusion: none of my claims have been near disproven, but a few straw men has been presented to be stricken down ;)

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#113

Post by petre »

g_p wrote: post #88
sangnoir wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as has been discussed elsewhere, the ability to avoid using google services is a serious disincentive for google to support cyanogenmod. The same argument applies to AOSP (cyanogenmod's upstream), but that hasn't stopped Google from supporting it.

With a little bit of careful adjustment to settings, you can disable all Google services on a Nexus device. It takes a little effort, but it can be done - unrooted and unmodified.

I had to install CM to do that on my Nexus 5.

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#114

Post by cookiecaper »

dispose13432 wrote: post #84
cookiecaper wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably better off using a stock Android derivative built for OPO. There's always a nice variety of them on xda-developers. I used to use CM on everything but over the last few years I've been plenty happy with pure stock Android (+ root). Didn't end up using most of CM's extra features and found that it was often unstable and/or leaving lots of things just sort of half-working.

>There's always a nice variety of them on xda-developers. I personally stay away from there. For root level access, I'd prefer relying on a project with actual reputation on the line, and has periodic spot checks.

If you have a popular device, that idea is fine. If you don't, I'm not sure if you're going to have much of an option moving forward. Less common devices frequently have phone-specific builds of popular distributions like CM published by a developer-user on xda as their only non-default option.

Even CM's support for a wide range of hardware was mostly bankrolled by Cyanogen Inc, which will now no longer be funding them as they rebrand under LineageOS. It's unclear whether any but the most popular phones will continue to see support from a group that has "actual reputation" on the line or not.

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#115

Post by dispose13432 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #114
dispose13432 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's always a nice variety of them on xda-developers. I personally stay away from there. For root level access, I'd prefer relying on a project with actual reputation on the line, and has periodic spot checks.

If you have a popular device, that idea is fine. If you don't, I'm not sure if you're going to have much of an option moving forward. Less common devices frequently have phone-specific builds of popular distributions like CM published by a developer-user on xda as their only non-default option. Even CM's support for a wide range of hardware was mostly bankrolled by Cyanogen Inc, which will now no longer be funding th…

They had a lot of phones before Cyanogen Inc.

They were the base Mod behind others (like Open Kang)

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#116

Post by kelnos »

BuuQu9hu wrote: post #74
kelnos wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is that RE is time consuming (regardless of whether or not someone is paid to do it), and the useful life of phones tend to be much shorter than other kinds of devices, so digging apart a blob on one phone is likely to have a limited useful lifetime. And for phones that the manufacturer actively supports, often a new version (especially if it's a new Android version) means new blobs to RE. When you consid…

The alternative; devices with no updates and no support outside their original OS, doesn't seem very attractive either. Maybe we can create incentives for manufacturers to do this work themselves, but I doubt that will ever happen, unless maybe we start getting obnoxious viruses like there were on the PC at one point?

Sure, that's not a particularly attractive outcome, either.

I just think it's unrealistic to think paid RE work is going to fill this need.

I think there are two realistic options: 1) the manufacturers suck it up and agree to support devices with timely updates over a longer lifespan, or 2) manufacturers open-source every bit of software that runs on the device.

#2 seems less likely, given that a lot of hardware is driven in part by loadable firmware these days. On the other hand, if that firmware is chipset-specific and not device-specific, and the chipset manufacturer can commit to releasing security updates for those, at least 3rd-party OS images could pull them in without help from the device manufacturer.

But really, it's all about demand: Apple tends to support hardware with new releases for 4-ish years as a matter of course, and i-device users are accustomed to expecting that. Android users just don't expect that, and your average user doesn't understand security enough to get why that's such a big problem. They likely mostly just think, "oh well, I won't get the new shiny Android version Jane has on her new phone, that's ok". If average users can be educated to the point where they will switch manufacturers if they're not getting security updates for the useful life of their phone, the manufacturers will listen to their declining sales. I just don't expect that to happen.

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#117

Post by quadrangle »

syshum wrote: post #93
XorNot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a false equivalency. No one suggests IT staff deploying hardware are B duplicating effort because there's a physical correlation between results and resources. But 10 different desktop environments are each solving the same problem 10 different ways, consuming 10 developers time, when a collaborative project would be able to reduce that by a huge factor and benefit everyone. I would also suggest it's naive to…

>> when a collaborative project would be able to reduce that by a huge factor and benefit everyone. Or benefit no one because you create a Desktop that no one likes because it is developed in a way to pisses everyone off Gnome users do not like the KDE Experience Awesome Users do not like the Gnome Experience XFCE users do not like the Awesome Experiance This is the reason these products exisit, and no it is not "dup…

> Do you really believe the automotive industry would be better off is all the Auto Manufacturers did away with all Models and simply made 1 car.

Nope, nobody believes that. Which is why any argument attacking that sort of thinking is nothing more than straw-man arguing.

What people believe is that some situations exist where fragmentation of effort produces far inferior results to coordinated efforts. The different factors that determine this are numerous and complex. Suffice to say, this sort of situation where fragmentation is indeed bad is common but far from universal in software.

The comments in this thread show some people insisting that this type of issue exists (and they are right) and some other people insisting on some dogma that fragmentation and competition are always fine (or something that sounds like that) and are arguing with straw men who think that coordination is always good and fragmentation is always bad.

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#118

Post by m45t3r »

gsnedders wrote: post #110
m45t3r wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you mean by "usable"? Vanilla Android is really usable nowadays (I have a Nexus 6P with Android 7.1.1, non-rooted with locked bootloader since I don't really root nowadays). CyanogenMod nowadays is more important for their support to multiple hardware then the customization from AOSP per see. This is especially true since for those who really want mods, things like Xposed Framework offers much more customization…

"Vanilla Android" (from the AOSP) doesn't pass the Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) nowadays, so according to Google's Android trademark rules shouldn't be called Android. Some of the "Core" apps simply don't work at all. Don't confuse what Google publish at the AOSP with what they ship on the Nexus/Pixel devices: they're increasingly different, with AOSP increasingly dysfunctional. Heck, the initial release of Android…

I know that AOSP isn't the same Android running in Nexus. However I have an Android tablet that I used to run AOSP (nowadays is running CyanogenMod, probably needs to change it to LineageOS). The core experience is exactly the same once you install GApps (at least the minimum necessary to run Play Store).

And no, I really don't need anything that CM brings (I only switched from AOSP to CM because it was better supported on my tablet, CM actually had a developer while the AOSP guy was simply pulling the changes from the CM developer).

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