[Galaxy S II General] Paul_Kolanjian:
A Word To The Inexperienced Users (I am primarily included)

Buddy, what part of "error 404: I9100 developers not found" part don't you get? I too eagerly want to get that Android Lollipop sensation on my old i9100 (two and a half years old now), but I have no knowledge in the real development, yes you read write, R E A L. You think building ROMs is development? Want me to teach you how to set up Ubuntu, download sources, and build ROMs? But does it make any of us "developers"?

Back to the real talk. So you want Android Lollipop 5.0, hell, we all want it. Seeing all those "Android 5.0 ported to blah blah" made you drool all over the screen, and gave you some hope, no? Buddy, what you are seeing are AOSP ports, that's Android Open Source Project, you read that? O P E N S O U R C E... But wait a minute, Exynos is a closed-source bastard, so why shake a leg if it ain't going to be stable, or even "bootable"? Do you think it's that easy? Just create a thread on the legendary i9100 forums and boom, hook up the devs like fish. No... And even if a developer seen your thread, they probably no longer own the device, or remembered the pain and agony of maintaining for the i9100. Do you think CyanogenMod developers ported KitKat to our device? We go ahead and talk all proud claiming "the developers" are supporting our device. HELL NO, it's amazing people who don't belong to anyone that get encouraged to do the work, people that break the limits ridiculous OEMs put to kill a device. Wanna know how KitKat and CyanogenMod 11 came to our device? You guessed it, "the developers" didn't do hell. CyanogenMod did it? They're busy cleaning their crap now that they've gone corporate, they are useless if it weren't for the maintainers of devices, people that break the locks and rule their phones, CyanogenMod just claims they're "the developers" but they can kiss my ass. [MENTION=4326427]Wayland_ACE[/MENTION], if you are reading this, sir, I thank you for your amazing contribution, the days and hours you've put into bringing Android 4.4 to our device, the amazing builds of the first and early KitKat builds, builds that I still keep to this day. [MENTION=1594835]milaq[/MENTION], when CyanogenMod's Jenkins eats the dirt, you were there providing us with nightlies that proved to be stable, preparing that device tree, and bringing CyanogenMod 11 to what it is today. Thank these two for KitKat, because THEY started the real work, and others came along. But you know what? The real credit for custom ROM goes to [MENTION=3208754]codeworkx[/MENTION], Mr. Daniel Hillenbrand, you are the bestest of the best, the elite developer, with TeamHackSung, you guys were invincible, gods amidst the battle Samsung started, you, sir, deserve all the "thank you"s and glory, you and Mr. Andrew Dodd [MENTION=591147]Entropy512[/MENTION], and Mr. Guillaume Lesniak [MENTION=2162789]XpLoDWilD[/MENTION], and all the other real developers that were barely involved with CyanogenMod. The spotlight was taken away from you, and all the noobs chanted "Thank you CyanogenMod" and forgot the real cheese, making you look like underdogs, but you guys were the The Powers That Be, TPTB from day zero. Mr. Andrew, I've read your posts (still am reading, uni = so little time) on Google Plus, and I enjoyed seeing real developers again. Although I had that pale face every time I read, I enjoyed every second of it, seeing people like you wiping Samsung's butts, cleaning and fixing their mistakes on their products, and now that you guys dropped Exynos support in general, Samsung walks in triumph, lingering around with a big grin, the walk of pride, no one to shed the light on their manufacturer errors, their own mess. Thank you, sir, and all those I mentioned, if you read this, I, on behalf the i9100 users enjoying the never-meant-to-run-on-i9100 KitKat that you developers opened path for since 2011. Thank you, for all your work, and our words will never repay you the effort put into reviving a dead device, a device that Samsung killed with its own "official" firmwares.. what a joke...

Back to you again my friend, take no offense towards you, as my words are words of a suffering i9100 user who keeps track of real development, something we haven't seen for a long time. Today's new upcoming developers have the balls to call themselves developers? In what right? Those people I mentioned up there, they hacked the crap out of Exynos, they don't have closed-source in their dictionary, and still, they kept on going, even when Mr. Guillaume bricked his Note back then, that's the ultimate sacrifice they did, not just damaging their devices, devices they bought with their hard-earned money, but also the time they put, and My Oh' My is time money... Today's development is all about Qualcomm, HA! With the right guides and tools, I can make you @CoolJoseph96 a developer, and we'll all do the Yippee ki-yay!!

Porting Android 5.0 from AOSP isn't a walk-in-the-park. You need the right drivers to be merged and stuff, drivers for the camera, for GPU, RIL related things, touchscreen and CPU code (stuff I have no experience of), AOSP comes with nothing, so you (not you personally) need to put in to get to call your device "a phone", because no one is willing to use Android Lollipop that barely has the 5.0 in About Phone. The device is dead, my friend, doing such threads is nice, motivational, you can probably do a "fight cancer" campaign that I'd guarantee it'll work, but a developer thread to bring developers to do something that reminds them of taking a poop (same as developing for Exynos), I don't think it'll help much. But here's a little bit of light at the end of tunnel for you, when CyanogenMod released CM 12 sources, or Omni or any other team releases their own source code, our chances will definitely increase, as porting AOSP like that to Exynos 4210 is like asking Apple for iOS sources, wait.. never mind (let's hope they don't take me to court...).

I apologize for bashing the thread like that my friend, I mean no harm or anything bad towards you, but this isn't as easy as we users think it is, Mr. Daniel used to spend days to get a new Android version booting on our device, and double the days to getting the device tree up and fixing bugs... etc. Patience is the key in such a situation, who knows, but take this for granted, all the ROMs starting from Android 5.0 and above are getting UNOFFICIAL tags, yup, no official maintainers, no official releases, and please don't tell me you believe CyanogenMod 11 Snapshots are made for stability on our device, because if anyone does, I sure got one hell of a laugh to enjoy. It's as stable as the Nightly branch.... which.... is.... unstable.... and because no developer tests those builds or commits new changes to bringing them to a real stable state, you just get lucky over there with the illusion of stability.

At the end of this long post, either grant some users (I'm heavily included) some time to understand how "it's meant to be played" and we, not me and you, but every enthusiastic member, will revive this device. The i9100 is capable, so let's see how far it'll go, although I am getting a new device (hoping this week or the one after, it's a Note 4 by the way), but still, I diligently feel that I must contribute to such an amazing device like many great names did, Mr. Chandra Poerwanto [MENTION=1228651]fusionjack[/MENTION] for years of giving and powering us with not only Slim, but a Sabered one, Mr. Yuri [MENTION=2376110]dorimanx[/MENTION] for your amazing power core, a legacy left for us to enjoy and new versions of Linux with customizations, Mr. Marco [MENTION=1597520]Markox89[/MENTION] for your great work back in 2013 helping Mr. Pavel build the alpha CM11, and for the -O3 Linaro builds, [MENTION=3690986]_Sale_[/MENTION] for NeatROM, a powerful tool and great firmware, [MENTION=4620275]Nico_60[/MENTION] for Spirit ROM, Mr. Vivek [MENTION=5022494]Vivek_Neel[/MENTION] for everything you've given us when we barely had support of anything, but you were there since day 1 working for our device, Mr. Armen [MENTION=4968043]Biftor[/MENTION] for the one and only Biftor series, @Goldie for the amazing guides on smali and Alliance ROM, [MENTION=4537136]bajee11[/MENTION] for Rootbox, a ROM I wish to have on KitKat, [MENTION=4460995]sooti[/MENTION] for Beanstalk, Liquid Smooth and all other ROMs you've maintained loyally, [MENTION=1077833]infected_[/MENTION] for joining the powerful ROMs with amazing toolchains bringing not only unique features, but real smoothness as well, [MENTION=4526073]Christiancs1969[/MENTION] for CyanoFox and [MENTION=286754]mnt[/MENTION] Mantas Zilius, you guys rocked back then, too bad to see the ROM dead for us, the amazing Mr. Ghokhan Moral [MENTION=289089]ghokhanmoral[/MENTION] thanks to you sir (although you're inactive for years now) I attempted to root my phone for the first time after 4 months of owning it, and it was the only custom kernel back then I used, dualboot, tweaks.., [MENTION=4213920]nims11[/MENTION] for being an awesome maintainer, [MENTION=4851213]Hopper8[/MENTION] for living up to the Recognized Contributor title, what an amazing member, [MENTION=1663702]HardCorePawn[/MENTION] for introducing Slim to our device, and what a love story that was and still is on my phone, [MENTION=3763274]rkoby13[/MENTION] (you rock my friend) for being "that awesome member", you are a motivation in my eyes, a member that helped many and been a big brother at most situations with your broad knowledge, [MENTION=2178960]pulser_g2[/MENTION] because every awesome member passed through this device and left a trace, [MENTION=1670821]cybernetus[/MENTION] and [MENTION=4663860]Computoncio[/MENTION] for keeping the legacy dorimanx left for us alive, you guys deserve a job well done by the end of the day, a big thank you guys to all the people I mentioned and definitely forgot to mention, your work and help will be commemorated by the humble users that look at this device and say, "Hell, this thing still runs, The Great Ones of today passed on this one, if it ain't for them, it would've been just another smartphone". Sorry for bringing this here, but I had to, let the forums know who made the Galaxy S2 legendary, and for all those members leaving and getting new devices that have the same forums as the i9100, the forum didn't make it itself, it's the real developers and members that made it. God bless you all.

Android 5.0 on i9100? In order to beat the beast, you have to be a beast, so roll up your sleeves and make a difference, because these people I quoted up there, the big hearts and spirit they got, we must be motivated by them, enough hiding behind our fingers and waiting for everything to come to us, let's give them a big thank you by warming up a little and do the work for once ourselves. Have a nice day/night buddy, peace out