[Q] How can I determine which ROMS are compatible with the "bloatware?"

---

The question sounds stupid, but the problem is I'm never sure where the "stock" image ends and the "extra stuff" begins, and in the past when I've put ROMs on other phones (Evo, Atrix 2) I wind up missing features.

I got my new Note this morning, immediately rooted it before I went to work (Had ODIN all set up and ready to go) and spent the day downloading apps. When I get the 64gb SD card I read about on these very forums (should arrive tomorrow or Friday) I'll then flash the nifty recovery stuff and use Titanium Backup to save all my application settings. Fine and dandy. Meanwhile I've been playing around with the phone (of course) and I've found there are things that I don't think are part of stock gingerbread that I want to keep.

I think the things I like are specifically Samsung customizations rather than AT&T add-ons. For example, the ability to swipe left on a name in your contacts list to send a text and swipe right on a name to call them is brilliant, and I don't remember that being a part of CM7 when I had it on my Evo. I also like that you can hang up, mute, or put on speakerphone a call from the task list--don't remember that one either.

There are a few apps I like. The Samsung music app (though it has a tendency to skip when the screen is off--anyone know why?) the voice recording app. I even kind of like the About Movies app, if only because the Note is the first phone where I thought it would be worthwhile trying something like that out (seriously, the screen is almost as big as the screens on some portable DVD players these days).

Some of these apps I figure I can back up on Titanium and then restore, and they'll probably work. Some apps might not work in ICS, and I'd really like to try a few of the ICS ROMS. Some features I like, like the phone functionality, probably get overwritten altogether. And of course I want to keep all the stylus apps and functionality.

Some of the functionality (like the stylus stuff) may have been duplicated in some of the custom roms. Some of the apps may be compatible with some roms and not others.

All of that leads up to my question: is there any information on what custom features in the stock Note were duplicated or re-implemented in various ROMs, and any information on what ROMs are compatible with some of the app add-ins? When I go through the lists in the dev section I usually see "debloated" which to me reads "we stripped out everything that isn't stock" but other than a few comments about stylus functionality I don't see a lot of information on what was carried over.

Those features you mention are features of the touch wiz interface that is Samsung firmware.

You lost those on cm rooms before because it's aosp based, which is what Samsung gets, and then throws touch wiz on top of it.

htc has an overlay they put on Android called sense.
Motorola's is called motoblur

If you want to keep those features on a custom ROM, just make sure it's based on a stock firmware and not from aosp