Hacker News Reader

Comment by gman83 | Hacker News Reader

FYI you can get LineageOS 20 (Android 13) for your Pixel 2 with the latest updates: https://www.xda-developers.com/lineageos-20-google-pixel-2-a...

View on HN

Last time I used LineageOS while you got the Android updates on most devices the underlying kernel and drivers were stuck at whatever the manufacturer originally shipped, and that included a bunch of security problems on most phones. Android security and updates is still a mess after all these years. For a while Android One seemed to help and I bought all my phones off that list, but even that's now gone. At this point anything that's not a Pixel within the (very short) support window is probably a big risk. Google really screwed this up.

This is all fixed now. Android 11 based ROMs introduced GSI (generic system images) which allow over the air updates and they even work with LineageOS.

Needs a newer underlying linux kernel though, so all the outdated 2.x kernel ports won't be compatible.

But I agree with you in your general point. Android OEM ROMs are a joke when it comes to support and they usually are out of date within the first year due to lack of maintenance on the vendor side.

I wish there was a more generic platform approach to this where drivers could be just packages instead of this whole statically built images mess that is also unusable for most endusers.

I used to be a fan of LineageOS, but after a few devices, I've found that it's not very robust (for different reasons).

There's a bug where location services don't work (and require a fix). Then my latest phone where I've installed reboots randomly one or more times per day. Both bugs are reported, and affect other users.

The camera app of LineageOS 19 was terrible, and wasn't able to handle the two cameras of one phone where I've tried it.

I will use it in order to make my phone last longer, but I don't have high hopes (and I'm not a big fan anymore).

There is this [0]. Gonna fire up Android Studio tomorrow and try to get the release build going.

0: https://github.com/SebaUbuntu/android_packages_apps_Aperture

That's defnitely a big benefit. I used LineageOS (whatever it was called then) to extend the life of my Galaxy S, but at that time not having a working phone for awhile was a lot less disruptive to life and work, so I didn't attempt this time. But once I'm 100% migrated to my new Pixel 7, I'll certainly put an alternative ROM on the Pixel 2 to extend its non-phone life!

>I used LineageOS (whatever it was called then)

It used to be called CyanogenMod and it was easily hacked by the UK authority's.

Whereas the big vendors don't need hacking, the UK authorities just have to ask

By unlocking the bootloader to use Lineage, I lost ability to do contactless payments. And dm-verity is disabled.

Whose "latest updates"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com