I just looked into /e/ and it looks very promising (only thing I’m missing badly is to connect to an Exchange Server with Active Sync – this was all inside the Mail App of Lineage).
I used microg-lineage so far on my S9 but lineage kicked the support for the S9, so there are no more security updates (which is crazy for a phone that is one year old).
The recent /e/ image still has security updates so far.
My question is before switching to /e/:
/e/ derives heavily from lineage, so will the support also stop soon for S9?
What? Already? They seem to pay more attention to oldies like S5 and G2, than to supporting new devices. Galaxy S9 is too good to drop it faster than some old LeEco junk.
But no, the /e/ devs are unlikely to do the same. At least because S9 and S9+ are an official devices for eOS.
Yes. According to the xda forum the developer for S9/S9+ stopped maintaining the build, so they removed S9 suddenly without notice from the official builds … and true … older devices seem to be much better supported … I mean where is the point going for a custom rom and after one year support ends … even Samsung supports the S9 longer
Thanks for your opinion regarding the S9 and /e/ … maybe there is some statement from a developer too?
Hi @kelusia, Lineage depends entirely on Device Maintainers - users who volunteer to build ROM’s for various devices. Eventually these Device Maintainers stop support - reasons could be anything for e.g. they lost the device, bought a new one, lost interest, got a job and are no longer available and so on. When the Device Maintainers stop building the ROM , Lineage stops support. This can happen for new as well as old devices.
W/e/ build our ROM in two ways - through device maintainers and at our own build process. This way w/e/ are not exactly dependent on the Device Maintainers. If they move out we can still continue support for the devices by building the ROM on our own.
The process has its advantages as well as disadvantages. Advantage is w/e/ can support devices for a longer period of time and continue even after Lineage stops support. The disadvantage is in some case we end up building blindly - without an actual device to test it out. This should not be an issue since the code has already been tested to run on that particular device but still we would prefer to build with an actual device in hand.
We are working towards optimizing the build process by adding more device maintainers and making timely security patches available for all devices especially devices Lineage is not supporting now.
Rest assured w/e/ are not dropping any device from our support list.
Hi Manoj, thanks already for this comforting statement … since I’m a S9 user about to go through the process of rooting and installing /e/ I’m wondering if you have any plans for the future as far as Android versions go. If Lineage dropped official support for the S9, this probably means that there won’t ever be an official Pie build for the S9 coming from Lineage. If /e/ is ever moving towards having builds for Pie - are you considering building one for the S9 despite not having an official Pie version from Lineage? Thanks a lot in advance for your reply and for the great work.
Hi @anja the response given above stands for all devices. You can put in a request to build a ROM for your device here. One of our team members is also building unofficial ROM’s for most devices as yet not on our official supported list. You can check his builds link here in case he builds for your device.