Funny, the comment types here are the same as on Youtube:
- “I still run Android and it is totally fine, will never switch Android just got worse!”
- “Well, money”
- “Companies need to support phones longer”
- “I just use LineageOS on that device”
- Misinformation
Personally, I am still on 13 using lineage OS. I have been offered Android 14, but in order to do that, I might have to either wipe my device or at least plug it into a computer and neither of which I particularly want to do at the moment. Running Android 13 has been perfectly fine for me.
Didn’t lineageOS allow OTA updates like regular android smartphones?
For patches to the same version, yes. But, for upgrades between versions, not yet. At least not that I’m aware of.
Now, GrapheneOS on the Google Pixel can update between versions and security patches to the current version too. So it’s fully there, but to my knowledge, lineage does not allow version upgrades.
Bummer, this increases the friction for upgrades.
Yeah, it most definitely does. Though, on the other hand, you get a device with the newest lineage on it, and you can hold onto that for 4 or 5 or 6 years, and then upgrade, and just put lineage on the new device when you upgrade. And you jump like 7 versions at a time. The big problem isn’t necessarily upgrades as security patches.
I like the latest and greatest personally. Also you can keep a device for a really long time with Lineage OS
I think it is suppost to be a safety mechanism to keep you from jumping without looking. You can just download the image to an SD card. I sometimes do that for regular updates as it is often way faster.
It is a pretty painless experience. Just download the image onto a SD card and then use the recovery options to flash it. There aren’t that many changes to Android this time around. The good news is that you have plenty of time.
https://endoflife.date/lineageos
I recently upgraded from android 13 to 14 on Lineage and didn’t have to wipe but to be honest, there was nothing new. Only back gestures were an interesting addition
Were you able to do it over the air or did you have to connect to a computer to do so?
No, “ota”
Yeah, I can’t do that. I’m on the OnePlus Nord N200. And it does not give me that option.
You can’t do a Android version upgrade via OTA. You need to either flash it with a computer or use an SD card and the recovery tools.
You dont see security patches…
Yeah I meant android wise
It is patched monthly. Also there hasn’t been a lot of major security issues with Android. It has a pretty tight security model.
https://endoflife.date/lineageos
Android is pretty secure. The kernel is highly stripped down, so it is more like a microkernel. Like, removing support for most filesystems etc.
They also moved a ton of things into userspace, I think their entire filesystem uses fuse.
Android is really good.
But still, LineageOS may implement all the minimum AOSP patches. But Google Pixel phones get more than those.
And monthly is of course slower than weekly, bjt expected if you support such a vast range of devices.
Then the issue of course is, is the firmware still supported? Where do the kernels come from?
These are likely out of reach for the devs.
Also, their OS is very generic, just AOSP with mostly cosmetic changes.
Where GrapheneOS implements tons of deep modifications, which makes updates and maintenance a bigger task. These features also cause more bugs which need fixing.
Weekly updates wouldn’t work at all and would take lots of time. From a Lineage OS perspective they maintain there own apps as the AOSP ones are abandoned. They all match the Android 14 UI. Also the default web browser is actually a usable browser.
I don’t really understand the Graphene OS die hards. At the end of the day they are both from the same source. The issues with Graphene is it has a lot of extra bloat and complexity. It also is not really stock AOSP which isn’t as nice. Lineage OS isn’t stock either but they don’t make changes unless it has a very really cosmetic benefit. I don’t really care for Graphene OS.
Yes the LineageOS apps are really nice. GrapheneOS usese the same, but the old versions.
They maintain different apps.
Their core OS is even more minimal than that of LineageOS, apart from shipping an extremely privacy and security optimized variant of Chromium. So no bloat there.
complexity, yes.