[Nexus 7 Android Development] EveningStarNM:
My Experience Installing This ROM

I was SO grateful to find this post and AndDiSa's distribution for Grouper. I am very happy with the results, too

At the beginning of the process, my tablet was running Cyanogenmod CM-12.1, their variation of Android 5.1.1 (Lollipop). It was, as many people have noticed, miserably slow. More important to me than that, however, was OS support. My main concern is the security of my devices, and I always want to run a currently-supported OS. Even though the folks at Cyanogen do great work, I'm not always sure what I'm getting. I thought my only option was to ditch my 2012 Nexus 7, which has no hardware problems and would otherwise suit my needs, and wait for Google to produce a replacement (I absolutely refuse to get any device that's tied to a particular ISP, and when I buy a new device, I always want it to be the latest and greatest. That way, I can have hope that it won't become obsolete for at least a week.)

To me, AOSP is always the best way to go.

I began by doing a factory reset and deleting my data. I'd previously installed TWRP 3.0.2.0 to get CM-12 on the the tablet. Before I proceeded to Android 7.1 (Nougat), I wanted to install AndDiSa's Android 6 (Marshmallow) distro just to see how it would go. I followed the instructions, and it the installation worked fine. I didn't use it beyond taking a look at the launcher, settings, and making sure I could get online , so I can't really say how well the ROM works.

After installing Marshmallow, I installed Nougat, following the instructions at the beginning of this post. That's where I ran into the first problem.

Note that I was effectively installing AndDiSa's ROM on top of CM-12. My tablet had been encrypted ever since Android 4.4. I re-encrypted it after installing Cyanogen, and did not decrypt it before beginning this process. The upgrade to Marshmallow had gone flawlessly, but after I'd installed the Nougat ROM and rebooted, Android refused to start after the bootloader had finished.

I booted into TWRP, and the log said that it couldn't decrypt the data partition. I re-formatted it, and then Android booted just fine. The user setup went smoothly. I gave Google my credentials, told Android to restore my apps from backup, and the tablet began automatically downloading and installing the apps I'd previously backed up to Google. I played with the machine a bit and customized its settings to my tastes. I was very impressed with the performance. I did a few tweaks to improve its performance a bit, but I really didn't have to do very much. From the start, it was performing better than Lollipop ever had on that tablet. I was very happy.

But I always encrypt my devices. All of them, even my personal workstations. So I went to Settings > Security > Encryption, and told Android to encrypt the tablet. It rebooted, and the animated Android text logo appeared.

And it stayed.

I waited an hour, then I gave up and rebooted into TWRP. After reformating the data partition again, I was able to reboot into Android. Naturally, however, I had to start from scratch again.

Just to be sure that it wasn't due to something else I'd done, I again tried to encrypt the tablet from that point. Basically, all of the settings had been reset to their defaults, so I thought that would be a good test. Unfortunately, the same thing happened. It does not seem possible to use partition-level encryption with this ROM on that device.

Worse still, Google's new file-level encryption option is not available. The settings to turn it on in Developer Options simply aren't there. I've considered completely wiping the device and doing an absolutely clean installation, because I've heard that, in that case, file-level encryption will be turned on automatically. But I've got the machine pretty much configured to my liking, and I don't want to spend another two hours doing that again. I'll wait for this distro to get out of beta before I try again. Until then, I'll just keep the tablet chained to my hip and hope that no one tries to steal my hip, too.

Nevertheless, I am very happy with this distro. There have been a few app hangs, but the tablet recovers from them with one tap. I've got my docs and reference manuals and FBReader installed, I can access my shared KeePass database and manage my encrypted Protonmail account. And I can watch YouTube videos without hiccups -- the first time I've been able to do that in years.

I'll still be getting Google's replacement for the Nexus 7 -- if they find a manufacturer for it, since Huwaei has backed out. But this one will continue to be useful. I'll probably end up permanently mounting it in my car.

I am a happy guy! I'm very grateful to AndDiSa. Thank you!