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It seems like all LineageOS builds are marked as nightly, which makes it impossible to pick out more stable builds from the not-so-stable ones.

How do I find a stable build? Is there a plan to mark some builds as stable, or make snapshots as CyanogenMod used to? Should I hold off before moving to LineageOS until those appear?

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    The only info I could see is this old post, which doesn't mention stable builds.
    – Grimoire
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 9:41
  • I've been running CyanogenMod nightlies for years and LineageOS nightlies since a couple of months now. I haven't experienced any problems. Having said that, it's going to take a while before they mark a nightly as stable so if you're prepared to wait that long, go for it. Just know that the experimental builds for migrating from CyanogenMod to LineageOS are going to disappear soon, which means you would have to do a clean flash (something I would recommend doing once anyways for good measure and a fresh start).
    – famdekk
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 11:12
  • @famdekk If you can backup your apps' data, then skip the experimental and directly go for the weekly, I'd say.
    – Grimoire
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 12:17
  • @DeathMaskSalesman Well yeah, of course. That should be the first thing you do when flashing ROMs.
    – famdekk
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 13:25
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    Stable is just nightlies branched at a certain time, and thus might still have problems (even fatal ones), just not as likely. Also, there has been no stable build ever since CM12-ish.
    – Andy Yan
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 15:57

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On LineageOS, there is no "stable" build, but despite the naming, "nightly" builds are considered stable.

There was a discussion on Reddit, Why are all downloads of type "nightly"? where it was revealed that that is just how LineageOS went with the naming since it is always built from the latest commit automatically (i.e. "nightly"). An official answer by a mod of the subreddit said,

LineageOS is a "rolling release" software. It means that new builds are continuosly produced (every week for each device since it takes a long time to get through all the devices builds without abusing the hardware) and there's no "stable" / "recommend" release.

All our official builds are meant to guarantee you the hardware will be working (from 15.1 onwards this is enforced, but most 14.1 builds should be fine too).

Another reply by user 'goosnarrggh' also explained the distinction from CyanogenMod's nightlies,

As you correctly inferred, the nightlies are produced automatically using the most recent commit on the currently-supported branch of development for each component of the OS. That's all that officially exists. Despite the word "nightly", however, each device receives a build once per week (all things being equal) due to limited build hardware resources.

Every device listed with downloads from LineageOS's website does have an active maintainer, and those devices do provide a minimally complete functionality as spelled out in an informal process that will be formalized soon through the project's charter. However, bugs can and do crop up occasionally from one build to the next; sometimes they're device-specific and sometimes (but more rarely) they may be project-wide.

In LineageOS's predecessor, CyanogenMod, there used to be a distinction drawn between the bleeding edge of development, "nightlies" and feature-frozen builds which had been manually judged to be of adequate stability, labeled as "snapshots". The snapshot builds would have been proposed for points in the OS's development in which the feature set was considered reasonably functional, and then each device which was demonstrated to be in proper working order would receive a build based on that snapshot. LineageOS has not continued this practice; at least in part, this is due to the demands that workflow would have imposed on the project's volunteer maintainers.

This is unlike CyanogenMod which has "snapshots" for stable builds, where "nightly" can be considered unstable.

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