Hi all, ultimately I’d like to experiment with a whole new os, but I gotta save up a little to buy a pixel. I’m currently working with a galaxy s21 ultra.

I never quite understood the reason to root and so I never really researched it. But now that I’m venturing more into the foss world and learning a bit more about tech, I’m realizing it might be useful for utilizing certain apps that require root and possibly helping to get rid of google and such services for good, but again idk the extent of what root offers and I also read it can be dangerous, so I’m lost to say the least.

My recent interest in rooting is purely because I have some foss apps that require root for me to use the full capabilities that I want. I also heard about adb and that it may be similiar to rooting but without actually rooting?

I’m just quite not sure how I should approach this and what things I should be aware of or NOT to do, to ensure I don’t end up bricking the thing lol

Thanks for reading

  • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    One correction, you don’t use adb to flash custom ROMs, it’s just for interacting with a working Android device.

    For flashing you use other tools which can write partition images to the phone’s partitions and know the format that the vendor packages those images and the partition structure on the phone. fastboot is a standard tool for that but some manufacturers don’t follow standards and there are other tools made specifically for them.

    Also, TWRP is not a bootloader, it’s a recovery. The recovery is sort of a cross between a PC BIOS and a rescue disc, it’s a mini-OS you can boot into and perform maintenance operations. Phones already come with a recovery built-in but it’s super-basic so most people prefer a TWRP-made recovery because it has much more features.