[Eee Pad Transformer Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jamesyboy:
I've heard many things, all great, about CM since the beginning of time (...well, close to it.). Frequently, before a real android phone was obtainable via the average pathways here in the U.S. of A, and the iPhone was the only real option for a smartphone, I found myself pulled towards CM-even though I had no way of actually using it at the time. The open-source, power-to-the people feel has always appealed to me...and my journey, starting from the age of 12, when I started crashing my parents computer so I could spend more time with the boutique builder that would fix it, later fixing it myself, then exploring the down-and-dirty innards of my gadgets-- this journey, has always felt like home to me.

My personal tinkering with phones and the like started with my sisters HTC Tilt, which I skinned to look like an iPhone for her. This was one of the first phones with Wi-Fi (Ha!), and trying to get it work was just as fun as using it.

Moving on, I received, for my birthday, a palm PDA (one of the first with a camera and a color screen...the device itself was blue), but I had to return it due to an exploding display.

Finally, a couple years ago, I got my first smart-phone. An iPhone. And within an hour after getting it, I had it jailbroken and themed. But the innards were still off limits. While searching under terms lie? "Hack phone" and "tethering, I always came across posts speaking of Cyanogenmod...In fact, I'd say that an astounding 50% of my searches relating to customizing or modifying--in some way or another, led to a post or thread--sometimes a whole article, on how to do something with android, and specifically CM. This proved fruitful for my later endeavors.

When I was doing better financially, I bought my first android device, and have never felt so empowered, and have never had such a strong ownership of my devices. That device was the Transformer.

Again, after just an hour of owning the device, I was looking up terms...and searching XDA for every bit of relevant information I could find. Some of the questions I had: What is Clockwork Mod? What is Clockwork Mod Recovery? What's the difference? NVflash? What's a B70 serial number mean for my prognosis? What's a Nandroid? How do I choose a ROM?

Although there was a metric ten of terminology I needed to learn to know what I was doing--and even though there was almost a complete vacuum of centralized information--- at least authoritative information (any questioned asked in forums led to me being booted and marked as a noob), things eventually worked out.

I learned about the Boot loader situation for the transformer, the status of honeycomb as a sort of non-open-source open source operating system, and about the battery issues....about kernels, and speaker mods, about modules and root apps-and along the way I learned almost the full metric ton of terminology, and had a metric ton of fun...with you guys.

Which brings me to today...I own a brand new galaxy note, but am once again in the dark. Only this time, its far worse...because my questions pertain to CM, the gold reference when it comes to running a custom rom, and its structure...that is to say, the structure of the ROM, the team that builds it, and the community that helps support it...all relevant to understanding the dearth of work and choice that we find in this very forum. And because its been around for so long, the staple that CM has become, assumes that all things and all people know what's happening.

Which brings me to my real questions....which I've searched, and searched, and searched again for answers to, but have found no conclusive, or concise and relevant answers. I've searched the cyanogenmod site, the forum, this forum, and Google. And while I found half-answers, and although I'm confident I can root any device I, or my friends can buy, and I can install custom roms, edit props, change permissions, dump radios, flash pre rooted kernels and other kernels, and backup and edit every settings app and image I can find, I still find myself lacking a fundamental understanding of Cyanogenmod and Cyanogenmod work, official, and unofficial--information that would make my life complete, and help me bear the fruit of this journey I'm on. :-)

That journey ends with a device that I own...one with cyanogenmod on it...specifically...a device in the near future that runs a version of CM that I helped contribute to-either officially or unofficially to.

And the beginning of the end to that journey, and the desired end game--developing, begins here. With my ASUS Transformer. And my questions.

Note: I illustrated this story in-depth, for a reason. To let you know that I've searched long and hard for clear answers, and that I plan to contribute significantly in the future to Android, and to XDA. I just need a teeny bit of help...a little direction. And so do a lot of us. I haven't found anywhere, a discussion of this subject--a significant one when it comes to understanding our community, our choices, and how to contribute...that subject is the structure of Cyanogenmod: the ROM, the team, and the community that constitutes them. The following questions are relevant to, and seek to address this fundamental lack of understanding.

Since the release of IcS, we've seen an explosion of CM in the Transformer forum. And while I understand how to read a change log, and a list of "what's working" and "what's not working", and can rely on a search find out what "Cornerstone" is, its still damn near impossible to define the relationship that constitutes all of the CM builds that are available. It might be clear, after a search, what the term "Kang" is, but what isn't clear, is what this means for the end-user. Its not clear what's official, what's parallel work, and what makes up the night lies that we can find on the CM repository. Is it one man aggregating work from forums like this, and throwing all of the features and fixes into a centralized build? Are the ROMs that we find in the Development section of the Transformer section off-shoots of CM to be worked on and differentiated in the future? Because where it stands now, I don't see a ton of differentiation. Maybe its because there's just been a new release, and I'm seeing the beginning of a process here. But I'm still unaware of what makes up a CM team. Its not clear how these things work-- if there is one man from the team working on the transformer, another working on the Epic 4g...and so on, or if everyone works on the same thing, and the feature or fix is distributed by a magic machine, or if each person on the team works on the same thing, and then a designated person ports it to his device. It's context like this that makes an informed overview of the current situation possible. And without that context, I'm stuck.

Most know that nightlies come before the release candidate(s), and that a stable release follows. But what I don't know, is why I never hear about an actual release, and almost always hear people speak of night lies, and in general, they're almost categorically excited.

So, if we were to examine my complete and utter lack of knowledge together, wed conclude that it's impossible for me to understand where XDA, and the ROMs that are available in the development section fit in to the grander-scheme of things. Is it better to get a nightly from CM? Is the nightly made up of the very fixes and developments we find in the various ROMs here in the development section?

How does someone go about deciding which of the dozen ROMs to install? Because the threads for ROMs don't explain anything when it comes to explaining an end goal, and a developers intent for the ROM, and the reasons why he/she is making one, I find myself stuck in the quick-sand of change-log after change-log, feature list after feature list.

Give me the 411. Explain to me what I'm missing in my Rosetta stone of the big picture..the grand scheme of things. Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong...maybe I'm just an idiot. Maybe you'll rage at me. But maybe, just maybe, I'm missing only, one small, key, piece of information here, and I spent a couple pages typing on the touchscreen of my transformer for thirty five minutes to find the answers that I badly need.

I'm sorry if I wasted your time. Thank you very much for reading this.

If you have a problem with my post, or a suggestion, attack, or complaint, please Private Message it to me...unless it pertains to the questions I posed...in which case I would very, very much appreciate your comment, your input, you sharing your knowledge, or even a question of your own.

Thanks.