Explination of ROM, Kernal, and other random hacking information

[scottolyer]

So, I am brand new to both this site and smart phones in general. I am pretty tech savvy but phones are a whole new realm to me. I just bought the TB and was wondering if someone could explain what a ROM hack is and also some information on kernels. I know what a Kernel is and what it does but in relation to what changing the kernel does on the smart phone i have no idea.

Thanks guys and I hope you don't all hate me for being new to this. I'm a quick learner

[Eschy]

A rom is the software that runs on the phone. Custom roms are built by independent developers in the community from source code that is provided by google. A kernel is what tells the rom how to run and controls small but major things like clock speed, wifi, compcache, processor slots etc. Really you only need to know about the clock speed the devs take care of the performace tweaks, you just have to pick the clock speed you want. one really cool thing about android smartphones is that it is very easy to overclock them, the thunderbolt has a kernel out there that will push the processor to 2ghz, though its unnecessary. I would follow @cyanogen on twitter for news about cyanogenmod for the TB. They are close to a release. If you have Any other questions feel free to ask.