Well guys Cyanogenmod is over its kind of a bitter sweet moment for me guys because I used to own an HTC Dream or as you all know a Tmobile G1 and ran CyanogenMOD 7 the first real public release and of course the versions preceding. I am actually quite disheartened to see it go but at the same time it was needed. They trully lost their direction IMHO and other ROMs soon surpassed them and their kernels started to faulter alot of the time lacking features others had. I want to know how the community feels about this. It * Might * continue as Lineage OS but if that doesnt take off … myself and others at XDA will continue to be hoobyists and push the limits and tinker with stuff. Having been a recognized developer there (NOT handing out my username here because i dont want a billion OMG’s in my inbox) im gonna miss having CM as an easy base.
Many developers use CM as a base and now it could become more difficult to develop. Not impossible but we need money if we are going to port something its as simple as that. Even if we do enjoy it we cannot do it broke
That is very unfortunate. I somehow missed the news, even though I'm running cyanogenmod on my one plus x as well... I hope there's gonna be a good alternative or lineage os takes off. Other then that I'm excited about the KDE plasma mobile. But I'm sure that's gonna take some time to complete if at all...
Devs knew it first we had to basically wait to say until they did a press release. It sucks we need lineage to take off so we can have a good Open Source Base
That would be true if the manufacturers and providers could be arsed to actually push security updates out when needed. However what happens in reality is that Google releases an update, then if you're lucky the manufacturer sends it to your phone 3 or 4 months later ... assuming your phone is less than half a year old. If you bought your phone from your provider, they need to test the update first before they push it on, to make sure it doesn't clash with their bloatware. That adds another month or more if you're lucky enough that they do anything at all.
Android doesn't have any real security. Most critical of the exploits are patched in never versions of the kernel, however google keeps using old linux kernel 3.10 even in the newest Android versions.
That's not exactly how kernel updates work. 3.10 is an LTS kernel, so even though it never gets new features it still gets security and bug fixes. For instance, the fairly new 4.7 kernel is already EOL and the *.10 patch is the last it will ever get. In contrast, 3.10's latest patch was *.104. That was the patch that fixed the Dirty Cow exploit. Granted, I can see in my phone that the kernel is older than that (3.10.76 or so?).
However, Android also makes heavy use of containerization via SELinux or alternative. So even if an app turns out to be malicious, as long as it isn't given root access, it shouldn't be able to see or change anything outside of its label. It may suck up resources that it's not supposed to but it shouldn't make changes that could brick your phone.
Still, the people who moved on to make LineageOS have warned that it would be best to not install CM anymore due to the likelihood of ads and such being injected now.
I know they contributed huge amounts but I have never had a good install or experience with cyanogenmod. Every other ROM I have used pull stuff from CM but none were CM in full as it never worked right.
I winder will things just carry on. I always went to XDA before any ROM makers website to get the right stuff. Ithe entire scene is odd and from the outside looks incredibly shady, XDA is the only place I trusted and still do. Plus it had all the other stuff too so rather than an website with just the ROM XDA will have ROM, kernel, tweaks and mods all in one place. Just easier to use.
XDA will continue as normal rest assured its a bump in the road but i can tell you there are some hard core and rich develpers there that enjoy doing this.. My recommendation to people who like to tweak. poke around XDA and see what they mess with the most and purchase those phones.