[Noisebridge-discuss] Android question: I want to share, via wifi, my Internet connection. What's the best way to do this?

[Michael Shiloh]

On 06/08/2011 02:42 PM, Taylor Alexander wrote:
> Pardon the somewhat crappy explanation, but:
> Rooting is a term that comes from the fact that the phone is based on
> Linux, and there are some things that linux only allows a "root" user to
> do, for security purposes. Normally, these phones come with root access
> disabled. If you "root" the phone, you're enabling root access, which
> allows you to do fancy things with the phone.

Aha! That's more or less what I suspected, but it was never explained.

>
> As a standard tech support thing though, you really should tell us what
> phone you have. Rooting and installing other OS's varies a lot with the
> specific model of phone you have.

I intentionally left that out because I was interested in the underlying 
concept, not the specific steps I would take to root my phone. What you 
said above was the perfect answer, along with Jonathan's earlier reply 
about tethering.


>
> Also, I highly suggest you at least go ahead and root, and if possible,
> install Cyanogenmod. Its truly awesome, and well worth the time it takes
> to set up.
>

Thanks for the recommendation. I heard part of the talk on Sunday about 
Cyanogenmod and it seems the way to go.

So Cyanogenmod is not rooting, it's something installed AFTER rooting.

By the way, does Cyanogenmod mean anything, or is it the author's name 
or something like that?