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LineageOS 22

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Re: LineageOS 22

#81

Post by timschumi »

sweden wrote: post #72
t14000 wrote: post #61

> Android 15 introduced several complex changes under the hood... > Android’s move to trunk-based development, and the subsequent growth in size of Android’s QPRs (Quarterly Platform Releases) have made our job magnitudes harder! As a byproduct we must rebase our entire code-base every 3 months. > Sadly, Google also has a habit of introducing deprecations or outright removing code that older devices rely on with litt…

It should be the opposite, I am a bit confused about LineageOS' statement here. The Quarterly releases represent solid milestones towards the final Android number milestone. GrapheneOS claims that this made their rebasing much more efficient: instead of receiving a massive dump of all Android 15 at the end, developers receive incremental changes (the QPRs) to help them anticipate major changes in the code.

GrapheneOS only supports devices that are still supported by the OEM, and they generally seem to have very few modifications that touch on frequently-changed parts of AOSP. In short, they can be relatively certain that nothing will break when they rebase, Google does the work for them.

On the other hand, LineageOS runs a lot of devices at the very (lower) edge of compatibility, which means that (with Google pushing large changes quarterly instead of yearly) the build roster has to be reevaluated quarterly instead of yearly as well. This was not anticipated properly for the Android 14 (LineageOS 21) cycle, which resulted in 19 devices not being able to be built on a previously supported major version (and therefore dropping from the roster completely).

In addition, the components that have been causing rebase conflicts each year now have the opportunity to cause rebase conflicts multiple times a year.

Re: LineageOS 22

#82

Post by timschumi »

notpushkin wrote: post #40
doublepg23 wrote: post #3

Highly recommend the Samsung S5e Tablet with LineageOS. It’s an amazing tablet for comics and light reading. Hard to beat its high res AMOLED display, incredibly light weight, and decent enough specs (I haven’t personally seen slowdowns when using Lineage on a minimal install). Forgoing gapps gets you crazy standby time. Couple things to note is it doesn’t have a headphone jack (it is legitimately that thin though) a…

> required to use Windows There’s an alternative flasher for Samsung’s bootloader that works on Linux/macOS: https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall It might not work with this particular tablet, though.

There also is an updated version with fixes that never got merged into upstream Heimdall: https://git.sr.ht/~grimler/Heimdall

Re: LineageOS 22

#83

Post by okanat »

nanna wrote: post #73

How's LineageOS with WhatsApp, Signal and random banking apps these days? Or let me put it another way: anyone running LineageOS but struggled to run any essential apps? (I don't care about games or whatever, I mean the apps you need to get around in life).

Whatsapp and Signal are fine. Random banking apps suck because their myopic and incompetent policies around custom OSes. Especially here in Germany where banks and even tech company management see internet as a magic, totally untrustworthy new curiosity. Combined with the overall extreme risk-averse society, basically none of the bank apps from big banks work with custom OSes. All require various levels of "hacking".

They use Google SafetyNet as a security guarantee and some outright ban access while letting you use a completely custom Linux PC. There are ways to hack those API calls with various system level interceptors like Magisk. I keep a custom made 2FA code generator from my bank as a backup though.

Re: LineageOS 22

#84

Post by catlikesshrimp »

nubinetwork wrote: post #74
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it is an extra pain. I've bricked several Samsung devices trying to flash Lineage on them. It is important to follow the Lineage installation instructions very closely.

It used to be dirt easy, i remember my s5 was just "fastboot oem unlock" and flash the new image... Sure you'd lose knox, but nobody really uses it anyways... But from what lineage is saying, it seems Samsung made unlocking impossible on North American devices. I'm not sure what the law side of things is like for this, because I recall it being mandated that phones could be sim unlocked after contracts expire... some…

> someone should try seeing if there is a legal requirement for unlocked bootloaders.

The EU is only now applying usb chargers. They will be ironing appstores next. USA, maybe not with the next president.

Re: LineageOS 22

#85

Post by b9b10eb736 »

pimeys wrote: post #67
byw wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any devices that fare better in this regard?

Not really, no. For manufacturers it is faster to just write the drivers once for their chip, and release them targeting to an exact Linux kernel version rather than actually writing good enough code that it goes through the LKML process and gets merged into mainline. It costs money to update the drivers later on and it especially costs money to mainline them later on.

Nobody's asking for mainline submissions though. Just publishing the drivers source code under a FLOSS licence when they stop supporting it would be enough to let the community take over the maintenance.

Re: LineageOS 22

#86

Post by timschumi »

b9b10eb736 wrote: post #85
pimeys wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, no. For manufacturers it is faster to just write the drivers once for their chip, and release them targeting to an exact Linux kernel version rather than actually writing good enough code that it goes through the LKML process and gets merged into mainline. It costs money to update the drivers later on and it especially costs money to mainline them later on.

Nobody's asking for mainline submissions though. Just publishing the drivers source code under a FLOSS licence when they stop supporting it would be enough to let the community take over the maintenance.

The kernel side of drivers is already published under a FLOSS license, it's just that the code quality is usually subpar and the important changes are crammed into a tarball together with (sometimes) millions of other lines of changed code.

The sources for the matching userspace binaries (which are usually the issue for Android version bumps) are usually under NDA by the component manufacturer and can not be released by the OEM independently.

Re: LineageOS 22

#87

Post by hollow-moe »

nanna wrote: post #73

How's LineageOS with WhatsApp, Signal and random banking apps these days? Or let me put it another way: anyone running LineageOS but struggled to run any essential apps? (I don't care about games or whatever, I mean the apps you need to get around in life).

Apps using Safetynet / Play Integrity are still broken and will stay broken since Lineage won't ever be allowed to pass these "security" tests

Re: LineageOS 22

#88

Post by bakugo »

gessha wrote: post #32
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to know, as I still use an S5e as my comic reader. It's not getting security updates anymore, but to be honest it's not like I'm running banking software on it, so I don't care as much about malware risks as, say, my phone. It's still plenty speedy on stock firmware.

What would be the attack vectors for malware on a tablet? I’m genuinely curious how crucial updates are for older devices.

Basically the same as a computer. If you avoid installing random untrusted apps, you are generally safe (i.e. don't install random no-name Candy Crush clones from the Play Store every week like some people in my family like to do).

Every once in a while there's a more serious vulnerability that can be exploited remotely like Stagefright, but those are fairly rare and if you're here, you will probably hear about them.

Re: LineageOS 22

#89

Post by biorach »

timschumi wrote: post #86
b9b10eb736 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's asking for mainline submissions though. Just publishing the drivers source code under a FLOSS licence when they stop supporting it would be enough to let the community take over the maintenance.

The kernel side of drivers is already published under a FLOSS license, it's just that the code quality is usually subpar and the important changes are crammed into a tarball together with (sometimes) millions of other lines of changed code. The sources for the matching userspace binaries (which are usually the issue for Android version bumps) are usually under NDA by the component manufacturer and can not be released…

Is the kennel driver code not available for the Community to take over the process of mainlining? If that gets done then surely the user-side code will work with all future kennels that contain the driver?

Re: LineageOS 22

#90

Post by enoeht »

nanna wrote: post #73

How's LineageOS with WhatsApp, Signal and random banking apps these days? Or let me put it another way: anyone running LineageOS but struggled to run any essential apps? (I don't care about games or whatever, I mean the apps you need to get around in life).

There might be a way via f-droid > shelter app and install these safetyNet apps in there.
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