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what your favorite custom rom (lemmy.today)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
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[–] 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

GrapheneOS and LineageOS are personally my favourite Android distributions.

"Custom ROM" is technically a false term for them, and LineageOS, PrivacyGuides and other institutions use the term "Android distributions" instead.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    "Custom ROM" is technically a false term for them, and LineageOS, PrivacyGuides and other institutions use the term "Android distributions" instead.

    Why?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

    Read-only memory (ROM) is hardware, a chip, or an area on a chip. Flash storage used to store a system image is not read-only, but the term "ROM" has somehow creeped onto it. The definition of read-only in my opinion is that you have to use a separate device to write it, it can't be writable by the device that uses it, it has to be write-protected in use.

    The operating system image colloquially called "custom ROM" is software (firmware) written to flash storage. It's not read-only and it's data, not memory hardware. If it were read-only, we wouldn't need verified boot (bootloader locking) to detect malware edits in it.

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