[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S 4] ubizmo:
Will curiosity kill this cat?

I'm not quite a noob, but close enough. I've had the T-Mobile GS4 since mid-August, and I owned a Galaxy Blaze for a while. Other than that, I've mostly owned BlackBerrys.

My S4 is rooted. I did this mainly to be able to run certain useful apps, such as SetCPU and Greenify, which help me to get good battery life. Now I'm thinking about trying custom ROMs, but I find the whole thing a bit intimidating. As a BlackBerry owner, I got used to installing leaked advance versions of the OS, so I'm not completely unfamiliar with the concept. Leaked BB OSes usually had performance improvements and bug fixes, rather than significant feature changes, but it always seemed like a good idea to get them, rather than wait months and months for T-Mobile to push out an update.

Okay, so here I am with my rooted S4, which I did via the CF Auto-root method. I've also installed Titanium Backup Pro and used it to freeze (first) a lot of stuff that I don't use. Then, one by one, I tried uninstalling the frozen stuff, so far with no problems. I find that I don't use many or any of the Samsung-specific features and apps (I may not know about all of them). I also don't use TouchWiz. I have Nova Prime installed. I like being able to double-tap to hide/unhide the dock. I like a minimal home screen, so that helps. I also like being able to hide apps from the app panel--those apps that I can't really remove but almost never use and get tired of having to look at when I'm looking for something else.

So, those are my main reasons for using Nova.

What I'm trying to decide is whether it'll be worth it to try a custom ROM, given the considerations I've just mentioned. One advantage, as I see it, is that at least some custom ROMs are updated more frequently than T-Mobile stock ROM ever could be. That means, to my way of thinking, that they should be increasingly tighter, with fewer bugs, better optimization, and so on. I'm not talking about "nightly" experimental builds, but just intermittent stable releases. Another advantage is that these ROMs will come without all the Samsung stuff that I'm not using anyway.

But I'd like to know about other advantages, which is (partly) why I'm posting this.

As for disadvantages, I guess the main one is that I'll manage to brick my S4. There's always that.

I've picked up some stuff from Play, but I'm unclear as to how to use it all. Titanium lets me backup apps and app data, and uninstall and reinstall things; I get that. I also got Onandroid. As I understand it, this app creates a total backup of everything, including the OS itself, settings, and so on. Is that right?

And, let's see... I got ROM Manager. This appears to allow me to create the same kind of backup that Onandroid does, only in internal storage instead of on the SD card. I tried making such a backup, and it seemed to go okay. I also flashed a CWM Recovery, whatever that means. And I guess I could use it to flash (that means "install", right?) the CyanogenMod ROM, which is, I think, what everyone refers to as "CM". There are a lot of acronyms flying around in the Android world. I haven't done this yet, because I'm still unclear what I'll be looking at after I do it. There's so much information on CM out there that it's hard to know where to start.

For example, I think I have to wipe everything before flashing CM. Maybe that happens automatically; I'm not sure. After it's done, do I reinstall apps manually, using Titanium? I probably haven't gotten rid of all the Samsung stuff, so I guess if I run a Restore with Titanium some of that will come back too.

If I don't like CM, do I just use ROM Manager to rewind back to what I have now? Is it superfluous to have both ROM Manager and Onandroid?

I also downloaded something called Goo Manager. How could I not download something called that? From the look of it, this is similar to ROM Manager, but is a kind of storefront for a number of other custom ROMs.

You can tell by my questions that my level of knowledge is pretty low. I don't expect anyone to waste a lot of time answering all the questions embedded in this post. But I'd like to know (a) whether what I've written is more or less accurate, and (b) whether I look like I know enough to go ahead and try CM or maybe some other ROM. I know even less about the others. I gather that CM is very well supported, and that's important. I could always keep my S4 the way it is. When T-Mobile finally pushes out 4.3, I won't get it, but I can worry about that then.

I almost forgot, I also downloaded Mobile Odin, but it looks like I wouldn't need it unless I try to flash a ROM that isn't supported by ROM Manager or Goo Manager. Is that right?

Enough. Thanks for reading.