The release of the mobile platform LineageOS 21 has been announced, based on the Android 14 codebase. It is noted that the LineageOS 21 branch has achieved feature and stability parity with the 20 branch and is recognized as ready for the first release. Builds have been prepared for 109 device models. LineageOS can also be run in the Android Emulator and in Android Studio. Additionally, there is support for building in Android TV and Android Automotive mode.
In addition to releasing LineageOS 21, development of LineageOS 20 and 18.1 builds continues. The continued support for LineageOS 18.1 based on Android 11 is due to the shift to eBPF for packet filtering starting with Android 12, which has led to the discontinuation of support for many older devices because of the unavailability of a Linux kernel with eBPF support (4.9+) for those devices. For devices with a 4.4 kernel (Qualcomm MSM8998), eBPF support has been backported, but porting to devices with Qualcomm MSM8996 SoC tied to kernel version 3.18 is challenging. The proprietary Lineage Recovery, which does not require a separate recovery partition, is proposed by default for all supported devices.
Compared to LineageOS 20, in addition to changes specific to Android 14, the following enhancements are offered:
- The transition to the android-14 branch from the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) repository has been completed, as of February 2024. The WebView browser engine is synchronized with Chromium 120.0.6099.144.
- A new application called Glimpse has been included, featuring an interface for managing photo galleries, which is used by default instead of the Gallery2 app from AOSP. Glimpse includes all necessary photo management features and is equipped with a simple Material You-style interface.
- The design of the calculator has been changed, redesigned according to the Material You concept and unified with other applications.
- The Jelly web browser has been revamped and styled using the 'Material You' design concept. Support for the Brave search engine and search provider has been added. Support for accessing Google’s encrypted engine based on HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) has been discontinued. When displaying recommendations from the Baidu search engine, HTTPS is utilized. A feature for selective access to location data for individual sites has been introduced.
- Applications for making calls, sending messages, and managing the address book have been redesigned in the 'Material You' style. Support for dark and light themes has been implemented. The Dialer, Messaging, and Contacts apps have been extracted from AOSP and are now being developed as enhanced forks, as Google has discontinued support for the Dialer and Messaging apps in AOSP.
- The interface of the Aperture camera application has been transitioned to the 'Material You' style. The dialog for requesting location access permissions has been improved. Automatic interface rotation upon changing the device's orientation has been ensured. The QR code scanner has been enhanced, and support for connecting to Wi-Fi via QR code has been added. Voice commands through Google Assistant have been supported. A feature for mirroring photos and videos has been introduced. Temporary pausing of video recording is now possible. Actions can be bound to volume control buttons. Advanced video processing settings (noise reduction, sharpening, etc.) have been added. Recording video in HDR mode is now supported.
- Support for the 'Material You' style has been improved in the Eleven music player and the LatinIME on-screen keyboard.
- A new boot animation has been proposed.
- The SeedVault backup app and the Etar calendar/scheduler have been updated to the latest versions. Improvements made by the LineageOS developers have been integrated into the core SeedVault and Etar.
- The side drawer has been modernized. control panel volume.
- The installation of updates in the A/B partition swapping mode has been significantly accelerated.
- In Android TV builds, a launcher without built-in ads has been utilized. In most Google applications for Android TV, the option to use either the ad-supported Google interface or the ad-free LineageOS interface has been provided.
- Scripts have been refined to transfer changes from AOSP, significantly simplifying the process of accepting corrections for vulnerability fixes.
- Data extraction tools now support direct extraction of information from OTA and Factory images.
- Full support for builds with LLVM has been ensured using the default LLVM bin-utils and optionally the assembler integrated into LLVM.
- The Setup Wizard has been updated and is now adapted for Android 14.
- Significant improvements have been made to the developer-kit tools used for Radxa 0, Banana Pi B5, ODROID C4, and Jetson X1 platforms.
Source: opennet.ru
