The CMSGS team has for the last month been releasing beta versions of their port of CyanogenMod for the Samsung Galaxy S line of phones, including the Captivate. CyanogenMod is interesting because it is the first ROM for the SGS that can actually be described as developed by real developers. They have taken the source code for Gingerbread on the Nexus S posted by Google to git.android.kernel.org, and have been actively porting it to the SGS hardware.
Previous ROMs for the SGS lineup have been more accurately described as “cooked” by “ROM chefs”, as opposed to developed. Essentially these chefs take already compiled versions of the ROMs released by carriers, unzip them, strip out the crap apps, add a custom theme, and a kernel, zip it back up, and call it a new ROM. The only real development was happening on the kernels, for which Samsung had to release the source code. But CyanogenMod is built entirely from source, not just the kernel. It’s a far more ambitious project.
If you’re interested in trying out CyanogenMod, the install instructions, necessary files, and known bugs can all be found in this post on the CyanogenMod forums. Please, read ALL of the post, and DO do the optional step of installing the Gapps, unless you like the idea of not having the Android Market. Please note that this is still a beta release, and the battery life is poor. But it’s getting better with each release.
