[freehunter]

>You don't download Windows updates from your laptop manufacturer either

True, but that's a minor difference. The normal way to get Android OS updates is through your device manufacturer, like the normal way to get Windows updates is from Microsoft. The normal way to get Windows updates is not from a torrent found on some random forum, and that's not the normal way to get Android updates either.

>Comparing LineageOS with the custom ROMs on XDA really misrepresents their professionalism

I agree and that's why I said I'm not calling them out... but again they're not the normal way to get OS updates. It's out-of-band and while LineageOS may be professional, it's not professional to have to abandon the normal update mechanism just to continue to receive OS updates.

LineageOS is still community support, and community support is not "solid software support". It's community support.

[rossy]

What's normal shouldn't really matter. If anything, the "normal" way of receving Android updates from your manufacturer is kind of bad. I bet if laptops followed the same model, you'd see exactly the same things, like late security updates and devices losing support after two-three years. In general, I think I'd rather see my OS distributed by people who make software rather than people who make hardware.

> I agree and that's why I said I'm not calling them out

You kind of are. You've mentioned that you don't want to download OS updates from forums a number of times in response to people mentioning LineageOS, but official LOS ports are not distributed through forums (or torrents for that matter.) You also brought up an old, somewhat embarrassing name that their development team apparently used to call themselves. It seems a lot like you're trying to discredit them.

[freehunter]

I'm not calling out Lineage as bad, I'm calling them out as unofficial community support, which I am saying is not "strong software support". Lineage is not distributed through forums but Lineage is a fork of CyanogenMod which got its start... being distributed through forums. From some random group of people who chose to use an embarrassing name. Lineage would not exist today if CyanogenMod hadn't been so popular. And the Android software update process was so broken that people had no choice but to download this software, distributed on a forum, from a group of people who willingly chose a wildly unprofessional name for themselves. Does that sound normal? Does that sound okay? Is any other OS distributed in this fashion?

I'm not trying to discredit Lineage. I'm trying to discredit the Android software update process. Lineage makes it better but it is not strong software support if you have to rely on the community to deliver out-of-band security updates.

Lineage is better than nothing, but only because the current Android update process is so broken. If Android was any other OS, getting updates from the hardware manufacturer or the community would both be laughed at. This process only seems normal on Android because the Android update process is so hopelessly broken because the original software vendor refuses to distribute their own updates.