Installing LineageOS
Recent events have made everyone more concerned about privacy. To protect your privacy, securing your smartphone is even more important. One excellent choice for this is Lineage OS. Lineage OS is an open-source smartphone operating system based on the open-source portion of the Android system, the Android Open Source Project. It is the successor to the well-known custom ROM, CyanogenMod.
Since I installed it on a Pixel 2, the following examples are based on the Pixel 2.
To install Lineage OS, you need to prepare two files:
The Lineage OS Installation File contains all the necessary files for Lineage OS, while TWRP Recovery is used to enter Recovery Mode and install additional required software.
Steps
1. First, go to the Developer Options settings and enable OEM Unlock. This is needed to unlock the phone’s bootloader, allowing the installation of other operating systems. Unlocking will erase all data and invalidate the official warranty.
2. Install adb and fastboot Android development tools on your computer.
(Note: If you don’t know how to install these, I suggest reconsidering installing a custom operating system.)
3. Run the following command to reboot the phone into bootloader mode:
adb reboot bootloader
4. Then run this command to unlock the phone officially:
fastboot flashing unlock
5. Reboot the phone and re-enable USB Debugging.
6. Use this command again to enter bootloader mode:
adb reboot bootloader
7. While in bootloader mode, run the following command to install TWRP Recovery:
fastboot flash boot <recovery_file>.img
8. After installation, in bootloader mode, select the option to enter recovery mode.
9. In Recovery mode, go to Advanced > ADB Sideload, then swipe to start the sideload process. Run the following command to install Lineage OS:
adb sideload <lineageos_file>.zip
10. After rebooting, the phone will enter Lineage OS.
11. Once in Lineage OS, install FDroid, which contains a large number of open-source Android applications for download.
12. To ensure that Lineage OS functions properly, install microg. microg is an open-source alternative to GApps. You can read more about it on this page.
13. To install Android apps available on Google Play, you can install Aurora Store.