First of all I wanted to say thank you for the amazing work! I am completely new to this - never flashed anything until today and (somehow) I got it working. I flashed the latest one you uploaded from March 16th (Android 10). For hours it successfully got to the loading splash screen, but would hang for a while and then eventually return to the Xiaomi Restore screen (where it says "Restart" or "Wipe"). I got frustrated and just pressed "Wipe." After that it restarted and then Lineage loaded! And I was so convinced my phone was lost :victory:
I have a couple of questions and I apologize if they are answered somewhere else.
1. The phone is unencrypted: How safe/stable is it to encrypt with an unofficial build?
2. The OTA updater...will it work with this build? If not, how would I flash a new update? Would downloading the zip and opening it on the phone work, or must I use TWRP or whatnot?
3. SELinux is disabled: From what I understand, this is due to the fact that it is an unofficial build. Is this a big security risk? It also warns this is built with public keys. Anything to worry about?
4. Do unofficial builds like these ever become official?
And finally, just a quick feedback. Everything is working great from what I've messed around with so far, but the camera will crash and show a green screen, and then refuse to load again even after fully closing it.
This phone is excellent but I didn't like how Xiaomi has barely updated MIUI for it, and the last security update was January. So, I decided to jump in and try Lineage.
Thanks for your kind words! To answer your questions:
1. I haven't tested encryption as I have no need for it so I don't know if it's working. It will either work or it won't so try it out. If it's not working I can try to fix it at a later stage.
2. OTA updates will only work for official ROMs. In order to update, download the new zip to your phone and install it with TWRP. This is known as a dirty flash, compared to a clean flash where you wipe everything first. Dirty flashing will keep all your apps and settings.
3. Official/Unofficial has no bearing on SELinux, there are plenty of unofficial builds around with SELinux enforced. It takes a lot of work to write SE Policy, time which I would rather spend fixing bugs. Maybe in the future once everything is 100% I will actually do it. I haven't signed my builds with a cryptographic key hence the warnings about using a public key. Essentially, if I signed the builds you would know that it came directly from me without someone else tampering with it.
As for security risk, considering you have unlocked your boot loader and installed an unknown firmware from a random person on the internet, I would say you have already made a decision concerning the security of your phone
4. Any unofficial build has the potential to go official. I already make some official ROMs for the Mi Mix 1 and I started off by making unofficial builds.
I would say that to my knowledge Lineage 16 (Pie) is pretty much bug free and Lineage 17 (Ten) doesn't have any major bugs and is capable of being a daily driver. I'm still working on it so it will improve as time goes on. :good:
