[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
Subtleties of Yellow Kernel CM 10.2

I've been severely exercising a clean install of Jon's Yellow Kernel CM 10.2 for a couple days now. I have not had to reboot once nor has any applications FC'd. That's more stable than anything I've run before. (To be clear, I have rebooted lots of times. But I didn't have to reboot because of a lockup or SOD, etc.)

(FWIW, I had to install PA GAPPS modular so I could use my TomTom Bluetooth GPS. (Needed the "Fused Location" service for that.) But I never logged on to Play (that is, I never let them update and get even more bloated) and I disabled Play, Service and Frameworks. So I'm basically Google free.)

Here are a few subtleties I've noticed:

- When the ROM boots (and it is a very fast boot), it always gives me the message "Android is upgrading" along with "Starting applications." I reflashed the ROM last night and disabled "One Time Init" at the same time. [Update: And also, SU might have updated during the reflash, which is said to have corrected boot problems.] I don't get the message anymore. (I have noticed that double flashing custom ROM's can clear up minor problems. I don't know why that should be. Perhaps some things get set up after the first flash and then get populated during the second?)

- My favorite browser is Lucid. (Although only v4.4. v4.5 causes my CPU to run 100% all the time.) Lucid has a slider/shade on the right where it stores its tabs for web browsing. When you have more than one tab open, the shade stutters as it opens and closes. It doesn't do this with only one tab open. It's only when it has to redraw a bunch of text that it slows down. (I suspect it's because they also darken the main screen as the shade pulls out. So it's like "Move the shade a bit, then go dim the screen a bit, then move the shade some more and dim the screen some more, etc." Perhaps poorly written code in the browser, but it didn't stutter with Jon's LS f2fs. I get a bit of the same stuttering when swiping through ten apps on the Recents page. (Changing CPU governor to Performance doesn't make a difference. Nor does "Force GPU rendering." ) It makes the browser feel slow. But except for those two screen redraws, the ROM feels fast and benchmarks fast.

- I lowered zRAM to 10%. I have run a bunch of apps simultaneously and it doesn't seem to have closed any. That is, zRAM seems to run well and it didn't seem like it needed the default 18% of RAM dedicated to it.

- I wanted the icons on my home screen to be slightly larger. I tried the ol' local.prop trick in /data. (qemu.sf.lcd_density=270) Doesn't work.

- GUI-wise, I can't remember what was supposed to distinguish Android 4.3 from 4.4. Whatever, I don't see any customizations missing. In fact, there seem to be more.

- I had to cut the text portions of my old p2p_supplicant.conf that pertained to wi-fi passwords and paste them into wpa_supplicant.conf to get all my old networks back.

- One of the things said to be fixed in Android 4.4.4 was the Heartbleed/OpenSSL vulnerability. I ran Heartbleed Detector on this ROM. It reports that the OpenSSL version on my devices is affected, but that the vulnerable behavior is not enabled.