I’m starting to see not as many newer mobiles in the Lineage OS list as I used to. The US is a lost cause with companies not allowing their bootloader to be unlocked, but even the Chinese companies like OPPO, Vivo, OnePlus etc don’t seem to have their recent devices on the Lineage OS supported list. Am I imagining this, or is the Custom ROM market reducing to just Pixel phones?
Every device requires a maintainer, someone who builds Lineage specifically for that device.
On top of that most of these OEMs don’t provide device firmware drivers publicly (camera, modem, speakers, etc), so the maintainer has to either use a generic driver (which typically sucks), or reverse engineer something more suitable.
It’s just a time and effort thing. As with all open source projects it relies on the community to volunteer their time for the benefit of others.
People should ditch mainstream mobile and build a better community. Since AOSP is maily google, i would love to see pinephone take off same way how vlc has replaced every media player.
You could do that now, and your phone will suck. Theres a reason people always stick with mainstream, they’re better. Until that’s overcome (don’t hold your breath) it’ll never happen, theres no market for it. People that want that stuff are less than the 1%.
I’m doing my part. I have a pine phone. I play with it a little. But it’s nowhere ready to be a daily driver
Hmm…I recently watched a video where they flashed it with I think ubuntu touch and was working without any issues. I’ll order mine soon.
I suppose this would be much easier if smartphones could be built from separate components like desktop PCs? That way drivers would be available and the problem would be compartmentalized, no?
No OEM to my knowledge provides BLOBs publicly.
LineageOS instead extracts these from the official ROM.
RE and/or shimming only need to happen when those BLOBs become incompatible with newer versions of Android.
The actual task of a maintainer is to configure the rather generic AOSP/LOS to work with the device’s specifics and integrate device-specific components.
For a few simpler examples, it must be configured which of a device’s SIM slots (if any) are eSIMs, which brightness values the device’s light sensor is expected to return, where the device has a fingerprint sensor (if it has one), the dimensions of the notch cutout and many other such things.
both google and Sony provide firmware blobs publicly, not sure about others.
It takes a lot of work to make a custom ROM and maintain it. Each one has a maintainer.
XDA is a great place to find Custom ROMs for many phones, including unofficial LineageOS ROMs that will/might become official after it’s stable.
For example, the OnePlus 11:
