[EVO 4G General] Pierceye:
I suppose this one is for the folks that are new to rooting and custom ROMs in general. I should say from the start that I am NOT a developer. Just a flashaholic. ;)

I started out as a big fan of HTC's sense UI. I still appreciate the spit and polish of the little details in their work and will flash a Sense based ROM just to have my FriendStream widget back for a day or two. The visual appeal is still a few steps ahead of the AOSP ROMs that are available. Sense is also easy to customize, for the parts that can be customized. HTC offers a fairly good variety of stuff and in my experience most of the apps that make your phone "prettier" are compatible with my Evo.

Things started to change for me the first time I tried out a MIUI ROM. I was astounded to find out the number of things that my phone was capable of that Sense either locked out or simply could not integrate successfully. I got frustrated with the bugs in the version of MIUI I was using at the time pretty quickly and bounced back over to another Sense ROM. It took about 48 hours before I was so annoyed with the lack of user discretion in actual system settings that I hopped back over to that Friday's release of MIUI. I like that ROM in the overall for the ease of flashing. Just download, wipe, flash and voila! You're ready to go. What I didn't like was the amount of infighting and chaos that the American team seemed to be struggling through. This does seem to have been resolved. Now I just want to see them iron out a few wrinkles caused by the leap to GingerBread.

I do want to mention here that I still have the utmost respect for the people who bring us MIUI every week. Thank you to Stiffspliff, who brings a fresh port to our Evos every weekend, and usually less than 24 hours after the Chinese team releases it!

That being said, I looked at flashing a Cyanogen ROM and at the time was frankly intimidated by what was needed to flash it. Initially I couldn't even figure out the difference between Stable, Nighly, Release Candidate and Experimental. So, again, back to Sense for a while and yet more reading. It should mentioned for the sake of the new folks reading this that I have done, and will continue to do, a TON of reading. I spent six months just lurking here at XDA before I tried rooting and still needed help on IRC. Many thanks to Eyeballer over there for getting me through that process. Once I had enough confidence flashing different ROMs I finally gave Cyanogen a shot and was truly bummed at the lack of "bling". So I flashed back almost immediately. Curiosity is what made me want to try another CM ROM. What I didn't know at the time was that Cyanogen truly shines under the skin. It finally made sense (no pun intended) when a senior member here made the comment that Sense was just dead-weight on what is already an incredibly efficient OS. The number and variety of elements that can be modified to an individuals tastes and needs is mind blowing. With the bug fixes that came out with 7.0.2 today there is very little about Sense that draws me back. Like I said at the top, my FriendStream widget is all I really miss, since Facebook's widget stinks. And I am still having trouble getting my Visual Voice Mail working, but I think that has more to do with my lack of knowledge than any inherent problems with Cyanogen. (Yes, I have tried the fixes posted here but I'm probably missing something obvious.)

In summary, in my long-winded sort of way, what brought me to Cyanogen was wanting to have access to the full capabilities of my phone, not just what HTC thought we should have. I do still like Sense and am interested to see what kind of improvements are coming down the pipe. However, if those improvements aren't absolutely exceptional I'll be sticking to Cyanogen ROMs as my daily driver.

Before anyone gets all hot and bothered I should also say that I know these Opinions are not universal. There are a number of experienced and talented devs who prefer Sense ROMs. This is just me sharing my experiences for people who are on the fence about trying out a ROM that is more AOSP than not. The great thing about the community here at XDA is that you have a huge variety of well supported ROMs to choose from. So if you haven't already, give Cyanogen a shot. If you don't like it, pick a different one and flash away! I would also like to hear about anyone else's opinions or experiences on the subject.