The guy on this page
https://milaq.net/android-degoogled/
(under chapter “Wifi/cell location”) put together an installation package for location services without microg. I have been using this on “normal” lineageos for a while and while it may not be perfect it’s certainly better than using GPS only.
You can backup and restore with Neobackup which can be found in F-Droid. In my case it works for all apps except Signal which has its own backup routine. You can then pull all data from /sdcard with “adb pull /sdcard” to computer. Then do “adb push . /sdcard” to the new phone, point Neobackup to your data folder and restore everything you need. I usually only restore user apps with data, you could easily bork your installation otherwise.
Not helpful, I know, but take your upvote from a fellow Pebble user for a really interesting question 👍
I’m running LineageOS on a Moto G42. I bought this device with LOS in mind (also it is one of the very few devices with headphone jack and MicroSD slot). So far I’m happy. I always rooted/custom flashed every device since 2012. I’m no longer rooting anymore though. Shizuku is sufficient for my needs.
Ok, thanks for letting me know.
Would Shizuku be an option for you? That’s privilege elevation similar to root but you don’t need to unlock the bootloader for it. Pro is definitely that banking apps and OTA will still work afterwards. Cons are it’s a bit finicky and apps written for root still won’t work if they don’t explicitly work with Shizuku, too (some of them do). You’ll also be able to uninstall apps for user 0 which aren’t uninstallable otherwise (like gboard on G72, when I had one).
I played with SuSE 6.2 for a while in 1999 but only really turned to Linux in 2001 with Mandrake Linux 8.0.
Still it would need signature spoofing which isn’t currently possible on normal LineageOS AFAIK since haystack and tingle won’t work on newer versions anymore. So if one doesn’t need any GMS-dependent apps and doesn’t want to wait too long for monthly updates on Lineage for microg then milaq’s package looks certainly like a decent option, at least for me.