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Comment by anikdas | Hacker News Reader

How do you install LineageOS on a random Chinese android device? How do you find the builds? I guess LineageOS only supports a handful of devices. Just curious about the process. I might as well start doing the same.

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Going to the list of supported devices and doing a stupid count (-> document.querySelectorAll("table.device tr") - I didn't see a count after a few seconds, so..), I'd say it's a bit more than a handful. :) 237 unless I messed up.

1: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

But compare the length of the lists for e.g. Samsung and LG with those for Huawei or Xiaomi. You're much less likely to find a ROM for a random Chinese device than for the large brand phones that are somewhat common in the US. It might be because Chinese manufacturers are even less concerned about the GPL (I once tried to look for kernel sources for my Huawei device and only found dead links) or maybe Chinese developers are less involved in the LineageOS community, but it's more likely than not that there won't be any LineageOS build available.

See comment above

Which comment are you referring to? A link would be helpful.

You can normally buy the complete source code together with CAD models for all the plastic parts, circuit board designs and datasheets for all the chips for $50 on those super dodgy chinese source code exchange websites.

The only problem then is typically getting it all to compile will be many person-months of work. There will typically be hundreds of toolchains, many missing, lots of build scripts missing or wrong, etc.

It's still nowhere as near as Ubuntu on a desktop, my Android device isn't in the list and who knows how many weeks of debugging I would need to make it work...

Surely that's something I would do always. But imagine getting a non branded Chinese phone with decent specs and being able to put ROM of your choice! That would be fun!

You don't buy a 'random' phone, you start your shopping process from the list of devices supported by LineageOS.

Not really! The thing is from a broader perspective it seems the popular Chinese brands have relatively cheap smartphones but if you are from any of the South Asian countries, these phones are still pretty expensive for us. There are lots of small local companies that sell re-branded phones imported from China and those are even cheaper.

Well anyone who was using Linux in the late 90s is probably used to ignoring OEM brochures and instead picking hardware based on compatibility.

I've had good success with Zuk and Snapdragon-based and Elephone Mediatek-based phones

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