^^

If you want to escape Google's monopoly, you can use LineageOS without google apps, as opposed to the malware and spyware-ridden trash that usually comes preinstalled on your phone.

I have a Samsung Tablet and Samsung's version for said tablet is a giant mountain of crap, full of bloatware, so I installed LineageOS on it. Also my old phone and my old old phone run LineageOS because I'm just logged in to Google on my {current_phone}.

I haven't used custom roms in ages, but I used Lineage back when it was called Cyanogen. It had this cool thing where you could adjust brightness by swiping the top edge of the screen. (This was back in the day when you could reach that part easily!)

Every version of Lineage has rooted ADB accessible in the developer options. If you want root for apps, you must load Magisk. If root is important to you, this is your OS.

Lineage puts out all the patches that they can, every month, unlike OEMs. If current patches are important to you, this is your OS.

Lineage allows you to run it without any Google closed source code.

These are some serious advantages, depending upon what you are trying to do.

If your phone is more than a few years old it likely doesn't get updates from the manufacturer anymore. LineageOS will get you to the latest Android with security patches. Same sort of deal as with OpenWRT for a router really, you get all the features and security patches but at the loss of the firmware that the device came with and its propriety enhancements.

I immediately put Lineage on all my devices. In fact, I only buy Android devices that Lineage supports. It's a uniform, degoogled Android experience that just works.

I use LineageOS on all my devices (it's actually my main criteria when buying a phone) to mainly install apps from F-Droid without relying on the Google Play Store.

It has the same familiar look and feel on all devices and by experience is way snappier than the original ROM.

Got a Xperia Z1 in 2013. Sony stopped updating it at some point in 2014-2015, which is stupid, but the hardware was still like new (which is the great thing about Sony phones) so I rooted it and managed to install it. Can't remember if it was already named "LineageOS" or "CyanogenMod" at the time. However, it lasted with me until nov. 2020 when I dropped and the screen cracked, made it to be changed but the replacement was kinda bad so used it as an excuse to get a 1ii.

I did the same with this "new" phone, that is going to be 5 years with me - since also got that only-two-years-of-updates thing, threw LineageOS on it and it's going as new.

So as I said the last time I saw a post about it in here, thanks to LineageOS I can use a phone for way more than they are set out to be forgotten. It's a great project and it's really sad Google are making things harder for them for the sake of "security".

for some certain models it offers updated android versions (while the company doesn't)

I want to use an OS that isn't loaded with spyware, so non-FOSS Android just doesn't fit the bill for me.

Because aosp is basically useless on your phone - it lacks a ton of apps

At the risk of sounding knee-jerk libertarian (though there are worse ways to sound), it seems to me that top-down, big bloc regulation is a non-trivial piece of what has gotten into this mess.

The entrenchment via regulatory capture at the baseband level, with enormous state interplay with TSMC and Qualcomm (both economic and regulatory, both publicly known and classified), makes it impossible for a seriously independent actor to enter the market, exception _maybe_ an ubercapitalist like Musk or something.

I'm much more interested to see what happens when we achieve sufficient peace that industrial complexes are no longer the primary pillar of support for chip engineering and fabrication. I suspect that this will unlock the open development, up to the kernel and beyond, that we all hope for.