- Unlock bootloader (depending on vendor, you have to do an online verification),
- flash a recovery.img,
- load into recovery mode (which, depending on the phone, might need extra work)
- wipe some caches,
- select new os/rom image,
- pray it doesn’t brick your phone.
You’d think someone would’ve learned a thing or two from the easy graphical installations linux and even windows have been offering since the late 2000s.
They’re only lying as long as people can continue to over and over find their way around the obstacles they place in the way, and it gets harder all the time. They have more money and more resources and more organization than the hackers trying to defeat them, they’re winning the war of attrition. We may be able to make small breakthroughs here and there, but overall we continue to lose more and more territory, because the amount of effort is disproportionate to the goals. Most of what’s left of the custom ROM community has given up on the losing battle with manufacturers and providers and changed focus to the various freephones but even they have their own troubles and are fragmented and short-lived. Between carriers, manufacturers, and content providers the whole mobile ecosystem is designed to be impenetrable. It is intentionally a fortress full of deadly traps and open source supporters have no hope to breach it anytime soon.