CyanogenMod successor Lineage OS is now available for download

The ability to install a custom ROM on your Android device has been a key benefit for tinkerers and developers since the early days of the platform. The selection of ROMs has changed over the years, but through it all there’s been CyanogenMod. This ROM has supported the most devices and introduced the most features of any custom build of Android. However, CyanogenMod is no more. Say hello to its successor, Lineage OS. The first builds of Lineage are now live for select devices.

CyanogenMod was (and still technically is) an open source project. The fate of the open source ROM is tied up with the Cyanogen Inc commercial entity that came into existence several years ago. That was an attempt to build a for-profit version of CM that would be sold to device makers. Steve “Cyanogen” Kondik was one of the founders of Cyanogen Inc, but he recently left the company as it began to disintegrate. Many pages could be written about the cause of the company’s woes, but let’s just say it was the result of poor management.

The infrastructure and the CyanogenMod name are owned by Cyanogen Inc, which left the open source contributors with a dilemma. They had to start over with a new name. The commercial arm ended its work on the Android ROM late last year when it became apparent that business wasn’t working, and took the servers for CM offline. That effectively killed CyanogenMod as we know it, but Kondik and other developers involved in the project are working to continue in the spirit of CM with Lineage OS.

Since CyanogenMod is based on Android and is fully open source, it was a simple matter to create a new fork. Lineage OS picks up where CM left off with version 14.1, which is based on Android 7.1 Nougat. The features are mostly the same, with the exception of some of the cloud services that were connected to the now non-existent servers. Other changes include the name, logo, and (unfortunately) supported devices list.

Lineage OS is still just getting up and running, so there are only a few supported devices in the first release. You can download Lineage OS if you’ve got a Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, OnePlus One, Moto G4, or a few other phones. One of the strengths of CyanogenMod was always its extensive device support — other ROM projects often used CM’s device trees as a starting point for their own development. Hopefully more devices can be supported as the project gains steam.

If you do have a compatible device and decide to install Lineage OS, be aware you’ll need to have an unlocked bootloader. Additionally, the ROM does not come with Google apps pre-installed. You’ll have to grab those elsewhere.

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