[Hero, G2 Touch General] btdag:
I received this question in a private message earlier and though I'd share the answer with everyone. This topic can be used to answer the above/below question yourselves too and hopefully others can find it helpful and respond with their own opinions too.

Please don't reply directly to another comments but purely give your own opinion on the following question. I want this topic to be without fighting or slander!

I am curious to your opinions on a "good" rom?

(note the question in the PM too me was a bit more detailed so my answer goes into quite a few different factors, its up to you how detailed your answers are)

My opinions as to what makes a good rom. Very interesting question. There are many factors. Most important personally is the person who is developing it. I like the villain team because there is a whole team behind it and they are very easily accessible to ask questions and fix bugs etc. The support on their website is stunning. That's not to say all the devs who don't have a dedicated team and website aren't as good. Raudg (or the guy who created vanilla eclair and choco eclair) was awesome. Very good support, though last I heard he fell ill and hasn't been on since, which is why his rom's are now a bit outdated and I probably wouldn't recommend them. The elelinux and Floyo rom's are also meant to be brilliant and I would expect good support from both of those too. I'm still hesitant of using the Cronos rom's due to the history behind the developer. I also found during benchmarking no noticeable difference between the Cronos rom's and any of the others. I will say no more on the issue.

One big secret that the dev's tend not too let onto is that almost all rom's (performance wise) are almost identical. The main reason I haven't continued the benchmarks recently is because after spending about 5-6 days (9am to 9pm) benchmarking well over 20 different rom's every one felt almost identical to the last. None of them lagged any more than another, and although I picked up minor bugs every now and then in different rom's there was typically very little to differentiate them. I generally found that with use you got used to each rom and the minor annoyances either made me change rom or I would just live with it until it was fixed. Having said all of this there is a significant performance difference between Sense UI and Vanilla rom's. Vanilla rom's might not necessarily benchmark better but they consistently "felt" faster to use.

On that note, I don't think i would go back to v2.1 of android. I love vanilla (with launcher pro) too much too go back, and 2.1 is no where near as good as 2.2. Especially with emulated flash in the Skyfire browser now.

I'm yet too benchmark all the 2.2 rom's against each other. Purely because of the amount of time it takes to do, and the limits of the results.

So what would I recommend:

1. Don't be afraid too try other rom's. I can't stress enough how easy it is too flash rom's. As I said I flashed over 20 rom's in less than a week and had no issues. You can always get into the recovery menu so you can always go back to a backup of an old rom.

2. Back EVERYTHING up. Another thing I can't stress enough. You never know when something might happen. I backed up apps etc with titanium backup and the rom's with nandroid built into the recovery. I then backed up my sdcard (which stores these backups) onto my computer. SO i had backups of backups. As I said - can never be safe enough!

3. Love you're dev's. Leaving ****ty messages on their topics when something doesn't work never solves anything (not that I expect this of you). If something isn't working ask about it and give as much detail as possible. Its really hard to fix an issue when someone says "gps doesn't work". Solutions always lie in the detail.

4. Pick a release that is well supported. Check the thread last post date. Check the last edited date of the first post (with the release in it). Don't bother using any release that is more than 2 months old (typically) and if there hasn't been a post in the thread for over 1 week ask yourself why! The best rom's tend to have at least 1-2 posts a day and have been updated with some sort of fix/release within the last 2 weeks.

Finally, if you really want a list of my top 3 rom's at this point in time it would probably be:

1. FloydVillain 1.5 (due to the support & community)

2. Floyo 1.1.8 (due to the awesome feedback its been getting recently)

3. elelinux's Froyo 2.2_RC1 (due too it having an experienced dev)

I'd probably say that Fusion ROM 2.2.1.9 is worth checking out too, and Tegro 2.1.2 if you like the slide interface (i'm very tempted by this one). They are my wild card rom's at this point in time.