My Pixel 2xl was really starting show it’s age, with the battery life trending downwards.
And being several years out of support from Google, stuck on Android 11.
I decided to install LineageOS on the phone, and I’ll go into details the process of doing so from Arch Linux.
Here’s a link to the official documentation it’s quite great and comprehensive.
Pre-requisites on your desktop
In Arch Linux, you will need the android-tools package that contains the adb and fastboot binaries.
You can install it with the following command:
$ sudo pacman -S android-tools
You will need to download the recovery image for LineageOS and the OS image for your phone from here.
They will be named something like lineage-19.1-20220811-recovery-taimen.img and lineage-19.1-20220811-nightly-taimen-signed.zip
If you want to install Google Play services, you will need to install the MindTheGapps-12.1.0-arm64-20220605_112439.zip package which can be found here.
Pre-requisites on your phone
Your phone will need to have developer mode enabled, OEM unlocked and USB Debugging. These options are available in the Settings -> System -> Developer menu.
Enabling the developer options is quick, go to Settings -> About, find the build number and mash on it 7 times.
Once those settings are all enabled. We will use fastboot to fully unlock the bootloader.
Open your terminal of choice
From a terminal you can verify that you can connect to your phone with adb using the following command after plugging in the USB cable.
$ adb devices
> List of devices attached
> 905KTBA1965395 device
If you see the device there, you should be good to go.
Rebooting into the bootloader
You can reboot into the bootloader now with:
$ adb reboot bootloader
Watch your phone reboot itself into the bootloader, and from there you can unlock the bootloader fully.
$ fastboot flashing unlock
Then you’ll have to press “yes” on the phone to continue the process.
Flashing the recovery image
Next we will flash and boot into the recovery image for LineageOS.
$ fastboot flash recovery lineage-19.1-20220811-recovery-taimen.img
This should only take a couple seconds, and use your phones volumes buttons to select booting into recovery mode and hit the power button.
You should be greeted with the LineageOS recovery menu, which we will now use to install LineageOS proper.
You may have to re-plug your USB cable, to make it appear with adb devices.
Once you’ve validated that it’s connected, you will click on the Apply Update button, and Apply from ADB.
Which will setup the phone for sideloading, which we will use to install the full LineageOS image using the following command:
$ adb sideload lineage-19.1-20220811-nightly-taimen-signed.zip
At this point you are potentially done (if you don’t want any of the Google apps, you can reboot now and enjoy LineageOS).
Installing MindTheGapps
If you want to run some of the Google Play services, you will need to install the MindTheGapps-12.1.0-arm64-20220605_112439.zip package as well.
From the recovery menu you will need to choose Advanced and Reboot to Recovery, then select Apply Update and Apply from ADB again, and repeat the sideloading process once again for the MindTheGapps package as seen below.
$ adb sideload MindTheGapps-12.1.0-arm64-20220605_112439.zip
You will need to accept installing the unsigned package from the phone, and with that installed you can reboot your device and you’re good to go.
It’s really incredible what the LineageOS team has done to give us better support for end of life devices. Great work guys, it really runs great.