WHAT IS LINEAGEOS?
LineageOS is an operating system for smartphones, tablet computers, and set-top boxes, based on Android with mostly free and open-source software. It is the successor to the custom ROM CyanogenMod, from which it was forked in December 2016 when Cyanogen Inc. announced it was discontinuing development and shut down the infrastructure behind the project. Since Cyanogen Inc. retained the rights to the Cyanogen name, the project rebranded its fork as LineageOS
WHEN HAS IT EMERGED?
CyanogenMod (often abbreviated "CM") was a popular open-source operating system for smartphones and tablet computers, based on the Android mobile platform. Although only a subset of total CyanogenMod users elected to report their use of the firmware, as of 23 March 2015, some reports indicated over 50 million people running CyanogenMod on their phones. It was also frequently used as a starting point by developers of other ROMs.
In 2013, the founder, Stefanie Kondik, obtained venture funding under the name Cyanogen Inc. to allow the commercialization of the project. In her view, the company did not capitalize on the project's success and in 2016 she either left or was forced out as part of a corporate restructure which involved a change of CEO, closure of offices and projects, and cessation of services. The code itself, being both open source and popular, was quickly forked under the new name LineageOS and efforts began to resume development as a community project.
CyanogenMod offered several features and options not available in the official firmware distributed by most mobile device vendors. Features supported by CyanogenMod included native theme support, FLAC audio codec support, a large Access Point Name list, Privacy Guard (per-application permission management application), support for tethering over common interfaces, CPU overclocking and other performance enhancements, root access, soft buttons and other "tablet tweaks," toggles in the notification pull-down (such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and satellite navigation), and other interface enhancements. Many of the features from CyanogenMod were later integrated into the official Android codebase. CyanogenMod's developers said that it did not contain spyware or bloatware. CyanogenMod was also said to perform better and be more reliable than official firmware releases.
Development
Like CyanogenMod, the LineageOS project is developed by many device-specific maintainers and uses Gerrit for its code review process. It also retained the old versioning format.
Before the official launch of LineageOS, many developers from XDA had already developed unofficial versions of LineageOS from the source code.
On 22 January 2017, the first 14.1 and 13.0 official builds started to be made available, following the official announcement in a blog post.
On 11 February 2018, the 13.0 builds were stopped, while the source code remains available and security fixes are still accepted on Gerrit.
On 26 February 2018, the first 15.1 official builds started to be available on certain devices, following an official announcement in a blog post. The 14.1 versions of Lineage OS were to remain in active development, but without feature advancements.
On 24 February 2019, the 14.1 builds were stopped, and 15.1 builds moved to a weekly cadence
On 1 March 2019, the first 16.0 official builds started to be available, following the official announcement. The 15.1 branches remained in active development, but without feature advancements.
On 28 February 2020, the 15.1 builds were stopped in preparation for the 17.1 release.
On 1 April 2020, the first 17.1 builds were made available, following the official announcement. The 16.0 builds are moved to a weekly cadence while the branch remains in active development, but without feature advancements.
On 1 April 2021, the first 18.1 builds were made available, following the official announcement. The 17.1 branch remains in active development, but without feature advancements.
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The information is provided by Tecquisition for general informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal advice. If you have any feedback, comments, requests for technical support or other inquiries, please mail us at tecqusition@gmail.com.
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