My issues with most custom ROMs
Last update : 28/2/2023
Introduction
Originally written in the ColtOS section of my custom ROM list, now it has its own page dedicated to it.
Issues with most custom ROMs
- Cuckflared site, in addition to soydev dependencies such as JS, XHR, CDN assets, and occassionally BlockAdBlock (and probably more)
Lineage & crDroid are 2 examples guilty of having both issues present.
Some, such as Arrow, isn't cuckflared but still has BlockAdBlock, JS, & XHR dependency. iodeOS is also guilty of having 50 scripts that run the site, but isn't cuckflared as well. Graphene, Calyx, Divest, & Lineage-microG are the only ones that doesn't suffer from these issues (though Divest requires cookies, JS, & other enabled in Chromium-based browsers for downloads).
- Downloads solely provided by 3rd-party providers such as Pling, SourceForge, OSDN, GoogleDrive, OneDrive, AndroidFileHost, and Git[Hub/Lab] releases. (paid-only providers such as Patreon count as well)
For official builds; AICP, Arrow, Bliss, Calyx, Carbon, Divest, Dot, Graphene, Havoc, Lineage, Lineage-microG, MSM-Xtended, Pixel Experience, & OmniROM are AFAIK the only ROMs that (for the most part) avoids this issue.
- Some basic settings (and not-so-basic settings available on plain AOSP) may be thrown in the "advanced" settings bin (for unknown reasons, probably to increase feature count), which is common practice for the featurefests.
- If released with a Vanilla/GApps distrbution, it may be not well-enforced, therefore leading to the Limbo category
Very few ROMs do actually enforce Vanilla/GApps distributions - AOSiP, Arrow, Dot, Spark, & Stag are the only ones I know. Havoc comes pretty close with only 1 Vanilla-only device.
- Most custom ROMs don't change any default connections, let alone document them. Calyx, Divest, & Graphene are the only ones to document them, & Graphene is the only one to change it & provide an option between using Go-ogle or Graphene's captive portal servers.
- ROM source code & device tree is in either GitHub and/or official GitLab, which are bloated big corpo platforms (and GitHub is the worst Git platform available; very closely followed by official GitLab which demands JS & XHR & whose official instance is cuckflared). Is there any custom ROM repository on something like Notabug, Codeberg, or even self-hosted Git repo?
At the time of writing (28/2/2023), LMODroid & /e/ are the only ones known to use their own GitLab instance.
- ROM developers tend to discontinue stable bases for ones that will need some work done to them (such as feature re-porting & additions). Here's a very rough cycle of how this goes :
- Google releases new AOSP base somewhere in September / October 2xx1 (let's call the new base v2.0, or 3.0 after point 4 in 2xx2)
- Custom ROM developers fork v2.0 & slowly reapply their features from v1.0 while also adapting them to v2.0, while also having to adapt their fork with AOSP security patches, API changes, bug fixes, & maybe even rebases (which may also change v2.0 to v2.1 / further). Then, such intial v2.0 builds (which are going to be stock with extra branding) are released starting in late October 2xx1. They may also keep working on the older base(s), but development for those older base(s) are reduced to either the occassional monthly security patches or complete abandonment; as developing newer bases are preferred to maintaining functional older bases.
Lineage (9/1/2023 Update : A13 [LineageOS 20] builds released in 31/12/2022) & Carbon are odd exceptions as they didn't release the initial new base builds alongside others, officially releasing it only if it's deemed stable enough (somewhere in point 3, though some exceptions can be made).
- After quite some time (let's assume between April & August 2xx2), ROM developers finally feel their v2.0 (or v2.1 / further if there are rebases) builds are worthy enough to their standards (as stable & usable as the v1.0 last year, ignoring whatever issues come out of the changes from 1.0 to v2.0/v2.1). However, at that time, Google has a v3.0 beta somewhere in Beta2-Beta4.
This point tends to be the general time when custom recoveries get full support for the new base.
- Fast forward to September / October 2xx2 & it's back to point 1 as Google finally feels their v3.0 base is stable enough for a mass release.
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