I have a Nexus 5, released in 2013, running Android 13 surprisingly well.
>Unless you mean unofficial builds, which are either too much work for most users, or not especially trustworthy.
The process to install an unofficial build is the exact same as an official build. New updates can even be downloaded and installed in settings with a tap of a button.
Nexus and Pixel devices are top of the line phones that are famously well supported by ROMs, the sort of "check for support in advance" I mentioned.
Unofficial builds are not the "exact same", else they would be official builds. Unofficial builds are usually distributed without source (let alone working build instructions) as opaque blobs that you have to trust some random XDA user, with no verifiable background, didn't do anything too horrible to. At best, you're pretty much guaranteed to be getting a build without selinux enabled; at worst, you're getting straight up malware.
quick edit to clarify: the "too much work" I mentioned before was the rare instance where there is source, and you have to build yourself to get anything trustworthy
All LineageOS builds, regardless of whether they are official or unofficial, are insecure by default as the binary blobs are outdated and will never be updated. LineageOS is the point of last resort if you want to update your EOL device to a newer OS build while sacrificing security.
>Nexus and Pixel devices are top of the line phones that are famously well supported by ROMs, the sort of "check for support in advance" I mentioned.
If the bootloader can be unlocked then there is going to be a LineageOS build for it.
>Unofficial builds are usually distributed without source (let alone working build instructions) as opaque blobs that you have to trust some random XDA user, with no verifiable background, didn't do anything too horrible to. At best, you're pretty much guaranteed to be getting a build without selinux enabled; at worst, you're getting straight up malware.
The vast majority of Unofficial LineageOS builds are performed by Recognized XDA developers. So, no, we're not trusting some random XDA developer. Additionally, SELinux is in enforcing mode on my unofficial Android 13 Nexus 5 build.
>Unless you mean unofficial builds, which are either too much work for most users, or not especially trustworthy.
The process to install an unofficial build is the exact same as an official build. New updates can even be downloaded and installed in settings with a tap of a button.