I know that most customizability features that were once exclusive to custom roms are available for use right out of the box these days.

In the case of manufacturers like Samsung, I think,there are still no official builds of lineageOS for the newer phones after the galaxy s10 series.

I’m aware that GSI roms are available. My experience with GSI’s have been kinda bad. Most of the time they lack a lot of features which makes the phone not viable anymore. Then there are also the random UI bugs, which frustrate the hell out of the user.

I miss the old days when there were lots of custom roms, even for budget devices. I used to flash them when my phones were out of warranty. I could use my phone however I saw fit.

Is there no way to bring back these good times ? Or will the whole custom ROM community just shrink to the pixels and a select few devices ?

  • Madnessx9@lemmy.worldEnglish
    211·
    1 year ago

    I used to install custom roms all the time back before knox on Samsung, now I cannot be bothered, usually something in the roms does not work among other bugs, it takes too long to keep up to date on rooting stuff etc, the support for roms is abysmal. I started to lose interest around the time banking apps started detecting root and not working, there were ways around it with magisk but it was complicated and could not find decent documentation on it.

    It just became simpler to use what’s out of the box and the newer phones I started buying had very little in the way of custom roms to start with.

    • MasterBuilder@lemmy.oneEnglish
      91·
      1 year ago

      And that is the goal - make it such a pain in the ass to go with something that won’t track your every decision that we all give up because it is easier.

      At least LineageOS with or without MicroG is fairly simple, with auto-updates in many cases. Once you get past Knox and install twrp, it’s easier.

      GSI builds are generally easy, too, if it’s well maintained. I like Andy Yan’s ROMs.

      • Izmir@lemmy.worldEnglish
        53·
        1 year ago

        If the recent drama with the former lead dev of GrapheneOS is any indication, putting our trust in a singular entity in charge of custom ROMs is also risky.

        • Willifire@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          Last I heard the person in question stepped down. Made me consider to switch to Pixel with grapheneos

        • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Fortunately the lead dev is not the entire project and his tantrum won’t affect the stability of the project

          • Izmir@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Sure but the fact that anyone there could do it means fundamentally there is a risk present and that’s a bad position for a privacy centered organization. The others there MAY not do it, but they COULD.

            • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Isn’t that the case with any project, open source or proprietary? Plenty of previously-respectable manufacturers have decided to just dump in a load of bloat/ad/spyware one release, at least with an open project there are security audits and the like so you know if something’s gone awry.