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Comment by fosco | Hacker News Reader

I have an HTC One M8 which I purchased in summer/fall of 2015. The phone works great but it makes me sad that I am still on Marshmellow and the phone is no longer supported.

lately I have been been wishing there is a way I can just run some version of linux like debian/fedora on my phone and be able to run apt-get update and upgrade (or yum) as updates are released.

IIRC it cost $600, and technically it does more than I need, but the fact I am becoming more and more concerned that security updates are not being received is making me call into question I actually want a 'smart' phone.

I understand android is based on linux but it is above my head to compile this realease on my own and it is difficult for me to trust rooting the device if there was an option to install oreo on htcone m8 with my 'old' chipset.

any thoughts? did I miss any truely 'free' linux smartphone OS that I would be able to use?

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I also have a One M8; mine is currently rooted and running CyanogenMod. (I keep meaning to update to LineageOS but haven't gotten around to it yet.)

Rooting is nice, and I believe it's important from a philosophical standpoint, but I probably won't with my next phone because the features I want are getting built into the OS, and I am missing several apps that just refuse to work when they detect they're running on a rooted phone. (Everything from games to my work email.)

It definitely increases the longevity of phon but, while it mostly works, it has lots of little quirks - especially with the various radios. E.g. I occasionally have to re-pair bluetooth devices, wi-fi will disconnect and then re-connect for no apparent reason, etc. Also, sometimes I just find it getting warm in my pocket and I have to reboot it to make it snap out of whatever endless loop it's stuck in. (I assume that updating to LineageOS will fix a few bugs and introduce a few others.)

I'm going to replace it with either the next Pixel or the next iPhone when they both get released in a month or two, depending on which one I'm more impressed with. I am going to miss my headphones jack...

One of the recent Lineage nightlies made Google Maps unusable on the M8, so there's that :). OTOH, the fix is landed and due to be in this week's nightly build. I really wish there was a more stable channel to be on, though.

The only reason I root my phone any more is for an adblocker. Which the iPhone conveniently has built in... It will probably be my next phone.

Yea, I use Firefox + uBlock Origin on Android, which doesn't require root, so I'm covered there either way. (Annoyingly, the regular Firefox on iOS doesn't yet support adblocking, but I think that will be changing soon.)

Browsers on iOS are just wrappers around safari. Apple doesn't allow 3rd party browser engines. So you will never see feature parity on iOS.

Yea, I know; and to make matters worse, there's no way to apply Safari content blockers to other browsers on iOS.

But, Firefox Focus has a built-in adblocking and I believe that feature will come to regular iOS Firefox sometime soon.

Every time someone asks me advice for "I have a 2-year $600 phone which is not updated" I simply suggest of installing LineageOS.

I've been running it on a few phones. Zero issues so far, the install procedure is trivial once you do it once, it self-updates and the changelogs are clean.

Although I have to say that I agree with this sibling comment:

> I really wish there was a more stable channel to be on, though.

Having nightlies installed automatically on your phone is creepy. So far nothing bad has happened, though :)

Thanks for sharing I will look into this further. I noticed no one mentioned sailfishOS, any reason why?

will my phone work with tmobile and still make calls with my sim card by using lineage OS?

Any consumer concerned with software updates should consider buying Google devices, and not third-party OEMs with shaky history of releasing updates. Your best bet right now would be rooting and flashing newer ROMs, unfortunately.

Fellow HTC M8 owner here. I've been running LineageOS for awhile now, and while it hasn't been entirely painless along the way, it's at least running 7.1.2 and has the August security patches. Worth considering, anyway.

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