LineageOS shutting down Android 11-based builds

Ben Schoon | Mar 7 2024 - 6:53 am PT

LineageOS is a great way to keep an older device running on newer versions of Android, but the project can only support builds for so long. This week, LineageOS 18.1 builds based on Android 11 are being sunset, but for good reason.

In a brief blog post, LineageOS explains that new 18.1 builds will no longer be produced for supported devices. Final builds will be published within the next few days, and that will be all for the version.

Why? The reason is pretty simple. Each month, Google publishes new Android Security Bulletins that can be backported to older versions of Android alongside current versions, but these are only available to older versions for so long. As of February, Google published the final security bulletins compatible with Android 11, which is what LineageOS 18.1 is based on.

It’s technically possible to backport newer bulletins and their various fixes to unsupported Android versions, but it takes much more effort, and can result in more errors and, in some cases, worse security issues.

LineageOS explains:

While we could (and some independent developers likely will) backport security patches to LineageOS 18.1, we won’t be doing so for a variety of reasons.

The largest of which is that it is extremely difficult to properly track changes across versions as they pertain to each patch/security vulnerability, and there is even a chance that in backporting the code incorrectly we introduce new security vulnerabilities.

As such, LineageOS 18.1 is going by the wayside. Existing builds will continue to be available, but new official builds won’t be coming.