Lineage has been the go-to ROM that beat every other ROM in active users by one or more orders of magnitude since the beginning of Android. Everyone that cares a little bit about custom ROMs knows what Lineage is, and if they don't they will recognize its previous name CyanogenMod.
Average users are never going to care about custom ROMs because it's not worth the effort for them, so why would you care about making LOS more mainstream?
More people using a thing (in this case I mean FOSS more than LOS specifically) influences the market, companies start to notice and may even be forced to adapt. Large private monopolistic ecosystem are really bad for everything.
It would make things easier for smaller brands to enter market as well - like what Raspberry/Banana Pi but for phones.
Also the official list of supported devices (wiki.lineageos.org/devices) has a super easy install process. Mainstream would mean more of these (eg the latest flagship Samsung supported is S10/Note10). And expanding this list would make a huge difference in addition - not everyone that knows about custom ROMs is tech savvy (or just wants a stable OS with OTA).
because adopting open source software is a societal good? the idea that it won't grow is kind of bleak. the industry standard for android device OS is dogshit for user privacy and a private monopoly and that's something we should want fixed. unless you like living under constant corporate surveillance.
I am really tempted to try and set this up on one of my devices. Never messed with this before so it's a bit intimidating
I have no idea what I'm doing but I imagine I should be able to. I have a xiaomi redmi note 10 and a galaxy tab a8 tablet laying around not really being used.
Whenever Google kills a feature used by <1% people always cite that is still over a million people. But nobody looks at the reverse. 1.5 million Lineage users doesn't even make up a tenth of a single percent of Android overall.
as long as it's paid off just give them a call and ask it to be unlocked and if they still don't want to just say your a developer and need it for work that normally works even if it isn't paid off
Depends. 1st you need to find out if your phone/manufacturer allows unlocking the bootloader. No unlocking, no custom rom, no lineage os. If it is supported, you need to find a lineageOS rom for your phone. There is an official lineageOS website where you can find compatible devices. If it’s not listed there (which is not unlikely), you can search the web for unofficial lineageOS roms or other custom roms. Be careful, some of your phone’s features might not work properly or at all but most custom rom developers provide you with a list of what is and isn’t working.
And for the installation part, it’s probably better to look up a full tutorial on the web as installing a custom recovery that you need to install the rom can be a bit tricky…
I’ve got a /unique/ device that I use to exclusively run a single specialist app. It’s 5 years old, and it does the job.
Well, did the job. But they dropped support for Android9. Can’t unlock the bootloader (technically I can, but any rom just bootloops) and the vendor stopped releasing updates in 2021.
Sure, it’s an edge case. But I’ve got perfectly functioning hardware, to run perfectly functioning software and 6 months ago everything worked fine.
Now it doesn’t, and I’ve either got to find replacement software, or hardware. And I’m probably just… not. Everyone loses. Hardware manufacturers don’t get a sale to replace broken hardware (and it wouldn’t have been long, the phone has been yeeted down the road at 70km/h more than once), software vendors lose my subscription, and I just have a shitty experience.
And why? Because of some way software is packaged. Who benefits from this?
I would love to use lineage or /e/ again on my phone, but Google's Foto app is Soo good compared to all of the foss apps out there. Especially if you like modes like super-macro I did not find anything near that.
This is a shame bc/ I've used an degoogled device for over an decade now.
Does anyone have an idea how I could come back on the good side without loosing the functionality of that app?
Maybe I'm not aware what I'm missing out on. On GrapheneOS on a Pixel phone, you can install the camera app made by Google. com.google.android.GoogleCamera. Has some fancy features, but maybe not the ones you are referring to?
I can't confirm if all features are working, but possibly. My case is that I have LineageOS on my phone and my son has an Amazon tablet that I've used Fire Toolbox on to install Google Playstore and services. I'm able to approve/deny apps for him to install (I get the notification on Family Link on my phone), but some things aren't working because I'm having trouble with Play services on the tablet.
I am using this, best decision I've ever taken. Using my device feels new again. There is still the issue with play integrity. Apart from that everything's good so far.
They’re different projects with different goals. Graphene is more private & secure if that’s the thing that matters to you. Lineage supports far more devices