[Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Creativity-Null:
I'm sorry about the long post if you want to get straight to my question, skip the first paragraph

I was avoiding this because it is a fairly noob question set (and I've seen a history of new members on XDA being berated for questions that could have been answered by any amount of research and I'm unsure whether my question set will fall into that category), but I just can't do anymore research since most information I'm finding is not in one place and I can't seem to find a full feature list for any of the ROMs and Kernels I research and look into, and on top of that there are SOOO many.... I'm about to pull my hair out of my head and my skull along with it, and every search engine I use is contemplating homicide (google has divorced me and is planning my murder for the life insurance money, and duck-duck-go is biting my heels with its bill) and firefox is planning a suicide bombing taking the 50 or more tabs with it along with my RAM, and I'm not terribly sure any of those actions aren't justified (and also, as you can probably tell, I'm going NUTS!). Just the amount of information and the amount of digging I have to do to find a single answer for the MANY questions I have regarding these ROMs and Kernels is staggering (I remember having similar problems searching to find the right linux distribution for me, but it wasn't this hard and after 2 or more weeks of searching, I didn't find myself not having any substantial answer, nor did it actually take two weeks)

anyways, enough with the crazy intro to the question

My current phone is a Nexus S 4g (sprint) currently running the stock ROM and Kernel, gingerbread 2.3.7 (build GWK74). I have it rooted and I have clockwork mod recovery flashed as well as ROM manager installed. I'm looking for ROM and Kernel recommendations (and combinations, I want to make sure they're compatible) as well as reasons why they might fit my needs

I need a ROM and Kernel that:

1. Won't reduce any of the current features I have on the Stock ROM/Kernel I have (though I don't use NFC so if google wallet isn't applicable, that's not a loss)

2. Will allow more steps in frequencies on my CPU (so CPUtuner won't tell me it can only go between 100Mhz and 1Ghz when I attempt to manually change the frequency, I can get one governor to get me 400mhz, but that only adds one more step to the 2 current steps, and performance and powersave governors don't work with the stock kernel, not that it's a big deal, I prefer conservative and ondemand)

3. will allow voodoo control & voodoo color (or any other feature that might be useful, though BLN isn't a big deal to me)

4. Has better battery life (while in use, use being things similar to internet browsing) than stock ROM/Kernel (so UI flare isn't completely necessary, and underclocking and/or undervolting would be great, as long as it doesn't sacrifice speed)

5. The UI should be less jittery than I'm seeing the stock react half the time (though that might be an effect of the CPU tuner)

6. I would like overclocking (however if that interferes with battery life, then I can live without it as long as it doesn't make the speed worse than stock)

7. this coincides with #1, but I think it should be said anyways: I don't want any connectivity (besides maybe NFC) to be affected adversely, so I want 4g, 3g (given), wifi, tethering, etc...

a few questions I have that I can't seem to clear up:

1. I'm beginning to develop software for android, so I'm wondering if any ROM and/or Kernel will affect ADB or any connection to my PC at all

2. What advantages do CM7.1 nightlies have over the CM7.1 stable, and any disadvantages (because I would prefer stable unless there's something on the nightlies I might want)

3. And any advantages ICS ports might have to anything listed above? and compatible kernels?

well, I have done some research, and the two ROMs I'm currently considering are Oxygen and CM7.1 (stable). I like Oxygen because it's a barebones rom with a few extra features that (from what I've seen thus far) don't interfere with performance or battery life. I like CM7.1 because it seems to be fairly quick and has a good feature set.

now I know that the performance might be more affected by the kernel than the ROM, so the kernels I've been most interested in are Netarchy and Trinity. Netarchy has decent speeds (though I'm unsure of its effect on battery life) and has a great list of features (such as voodoo control). Trinity is fast (depending on which version, I was debating on the overclocked version that doesn't go to the highest clock setting and the undervolted version which stayed at 1ghz but had great powersaving) because of its speed and/or powersaving, but I'm unsure of all of the features it has)

I had read that CM has its own kernel, but I can't find any substantial evidence to it besides a few short forum posts on various forums. I can't find anything on the CM site that backs up those claims (I could have just missed it though)

I was considering MIUI but I had heard that it had some translation problems from chinese into english and I'm not sure if you can get the text to read from left to right (and be alligned that way). Not sure if that has been fixed and if the features on there are necessary and/or make it difficult to use

I'm asking here because I'm sure I've barely scratched the surface on all of the ROMs and Kernels that might be helpful to me (and hope to get info from more knowledgeable people)

I have been referring to this thread

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1067813

I'm sure somethings I want aren't possible or if they are, there's negligible gain (I'm starting to thing that about battery life with the more I read)

once again, I apologize for the extremely long post, as you can tell I'm verbose (as it's really the only way I know how to get my point across)

if you need further information, feel free to ask. If any information needs to be cut off (especially if this needs to be cut shorter) let me know