Replicant (operating system)

Replicant is a free operating system (OS) based on the Android mobile platform that intends to replace all proprietary Android components with free-software counterparts. It is available for several smartphones and tablet computers. It is written in the same programming languages as Android (from which it is forked indirectly). The modifications are mostly in the C language; the changes are mostly to the lower-level parts of the OS, such as the Linux kernel and drivers that use it. The name Replicant is drawn from the fictional replicant androids in the Blade Runner movie. Replicant is sponsored and supported by the Free Software Foundation and partially by NLnet. The Replicant project started in mid-2010 with an effort to consolidate various initiatives attempting to produce a fully free-as-in-freedom Android derivative for the HTC Dream device. The original team consisted of Bradley M. Kuhn, Aaron Williamson, Graziano Sorbaioli and Denis ‘GNUtoo’ Carikli. The project quickly led to the writing of replacement code for the non-free parts that were required to make HTC Dream functional. The first component to be replaced permitted audio to work without a proprietary library. Replicant originally provided its own FOSS application repository, which was later replaced by F-Droid. In June 2022, Replicant announced they had removed F-Droid. The Radio Interface Layer software that handles communication with the modem was replaced by free code, thus making the telephony part usable. A library handling GPS was then adapted from free code that was originally written for another phone and permitted HTC Dream to have GPS working with Replicant. Early versions of Replicant were based on Android Open Source Project code, while versions 2.2 (April 2011) and later used CyanogenMod as their base in order to make supporting more devices easier. In a blog post on February 1, 2017, the Replicant project said that the future versions of Replicant will be based on LineageOS, as the CyanogenMod project was discontinued.

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HTC Dream

The HTC Dream (also known as the T-Mobile G1 in the United States and parts of Europe, and as the Era G1 in Poland) is a smartphone developed by HTC. First released in September 2008, the Dream was the first commercially released device to use the Linux-based Android operating system, which was purchased and further developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance to create an open competitor to other major smartphone platforms of the time, such as Symbian, BlackBerry OS, and iPhone OS.

LineageOS

LineageOS is an Android-based operating system for smartphones, tablet computers, and set-top boxes, with mostly free and open-source software. It is the successor to CyanogenMod, from which it was forked in December 2016, when Cyanogen Inc. announced it was discontinuing development and shut down the infrastructure behind the project. Since Cyanogen Inc. retained the rights to the Cyanogen name, the project rebranded its fork as LineageOS. LineageOS was officially launched on 24 December 2016, with the source code available on both GitHub and GitLab.

CyanogenMod

CyanogenMod (saɪˈænoʊdʒɛnmɒd ; CM) is a discontinued open-source operating system for mobile devices, based on the Android mobile platform. It was developed as free and open-source software based on the official releases of Android by Google, with added original and third-party code, and based on a rolling release development model. Although only a subset of total CyanogenMod users elected to report their use of the firmware, on 23 March 2015, some reports indicated that over 50 million people ran CyanogenMod on their phones.