[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] JonW434:
Just a quick update.. TWRP versions and all that stuff is so frustrating.. almost torture. I set up 2 SD cards, both formatted different ways so that the external storage can be seen.. after a lot of tinkering and preparation I'm like "cool, I don't need this backup of the roms on the internal storage then", because I like having everything wiped before an install and having a clean slate with everything. Then after a restart, reboot, a new version of TWRP whatever it was (because of the dreaded error 7), the TWRP no longer reads the external device of either sd card. I remember one was with 2.8.7.0 (my safe fallback) and the other with twrp_3.1.1.0_unofficial (my filename for it). And then a few minutes later, neither work anymore. I remember one was formatted via Windows and the other from within Android OS. Anyways.. big frustrations, because now I've got no roms that it can find. I think this also happened with twrp_3.0.2-0 (official). But I just had tested that same thing in fastboot boot (not flash, to test it, and not let it stick) and it worked fine. Now it decides not to see the drive anymore. So everything is blank, with no access to roms.

Enter adb sideload. YAY! My get out of jail card. Within 30 mins of learning about it, and formatting things the right now (and updating my version of SlimSDK and windows adb driver), I was able to load the roms directly from my PC, including GAPPS. And now I have LineageOS14.1. Hi, nice to meet you LOS14.1 and newer updates. I really wanna see if I can just use this adb sideload method all the time, it's so much easier than dinking around with SD cards and worrying about which partitions will be seen by recovery or not. I'm wondering if I can just use this method with any version of TWRP and get away with it, or if the error 7 thing will still exist. Even if so, there's an unofficial version 3.3.3.0 I'd like to try with it. The unofficial version that Hacker432 or NATO posted, I think it was one of those two. I did a lot of reading after the installation worked from many of the earlier pages in the thread. A lot of the links are dead (especially the mediafire ones) but fortunately that one wasn't.

So far impressions of this ROM are ok, some things better (phone call volume better) and some things worse.. (temps are higher, performance scores are lower). I reached 80C for the first time ever. Wifi reception seems slightly worse as well but I don't know if that's coincidence. But keeping a connection has been tough (100% perfect wifi for the last few days with the other one), this one requires manually connecting sometimes and it doesn't seem to 'stick'.

No problems so far with the icons sticking, have restarted many times and they haven't gone anyway. Everything with apps working fine.. without the need to install Aparted, APPS2SD, or anything else. :) Translate is on the SD card with many extra languages installed. Same with Maps. 1G free space on internal drive. Device is rooted fine with SuperSU v2.82. I've been searching around for a kernel that I can inject that can bring some of that Soviet stuff back (for trial and error). So far, no luck in finding a zip file that can be loaded in TWRP. A lot of source codes but I don't know what to do with those. The app launcher thing is a bit different, but a lot of the core stuff is the same within both ROMs.. so it's very familiar.

I did have a problem with GAPPS initially on first boot up where it froze at "searching for updates". I restarted the phone (pulling battery) and reinstalled GAPPS via adb sideload, and the second time it booted fine and let me sign in to google without issue. Since then it's been a pretty smooth experience, just trying to learn the differences between them. My ideal situation is either this with Soviet kernal injected, or the other one with security updates injected. In Windows 7, there's this thing called Simplix updates, which brings everything up to date with one offline file. I have a feeling such a thing doesn't exist for Android, and it's done on a rom to rom basis. But who knows. Either way, the experimenting and experiencing the difference of all this stuff is so much more refreshing than the stock (caged in) experience. And so far, the app space (50gb+) is so freeing. Updates for google stuff like Google Maps doesn't seem to scary anymore. Haven't bothered worrying about a second partition on the card, no real need for it. Especially if adb sideload keeps working and I can do all the rom management installed from the PC itself. I'm happy to have avoided any factory reset (4.4.4 stock) up until this point, because it looked at one point that it was the only way out.

I'll give Smart Launcher a go at some point. Yeah, SD cards are a big problem, I checked and that crappy one is an "Ultra" but it's anything but ultra. Anything you've described about black screens, or pauses, or apps hanging has usually been when that thing is plugged in. The newer Extreme Pro one, nothing like that has happened on both versions of the ROM/OS that I've tried, despite a lot of my mistakes/experiments.

https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/...ard-sd64gbexme <-- just got 2 of them from the local Officeworks 30 mins ago. :)