I'm not buying your first point. Within a month of OEMs releasing the Kernel sources, you can find builds of AOSP over at XDA, Lineage OS and other forums. And with the project Trebble in P, we have builds within a week. I don't think it is hard or Google is making it hard to compile.

As for your problems installing it on other boards, where are the drivers for them? Your classic desktop installation comes with drivers for almost every laptop/desktop board. Android doesn't because the vendors don't contribute. A snapdragon SoC requires a binary blob from Qualcomm. There is nothing you can do without it. It has nothing to do with AOSP being opensource or Google controlling it (Google controls other aspects, AKA the Play Services).

You’re right, those two projects are successful at compiling AOSP.

Trying to get the xda builds and LinageOS working properly is subjectively speak—difficult and heavily device dependent.

I’m not sure about x86 images, but arm are heavily device dependent.

Would love be proved wrong. I’m looking for android images actively.

Android is only open in theory, closed in practice.

AOSP does not include proprietary apps like the Play Store, etc.

In order for device manufacturers to get the Play Store on their phone, they have to give in to Google's demands to add the Google search box on the home screen of the phones.

Apart from this, Qualcomm doesn't release open source drivers for GPUs etc, making it even harder to use pure AOSP on flagship devices.

Qualcomm blocked Google from using Proprietary Android on its devices! One of the Nexus phones couldn't upgrade the OS to the next version due to Qualcomm drivers.

> In order for device manufacturers to get the Play Store on their phone, they have to give in to Google's demands to add the Google search box on the home screen of the phones.

What's wrong with this? The Play Store is subsidized by search revenue, it makes sense to tie them together.

Tell that to Amazon and their Fire devices and to all the Android forks in China.

Android forks in China are not undermined by the lacking open driver support for Android.

There's a bunch of SBC manufacturers (pine64, odroid, orangepi, etc) worldwide that have managed to compile AOSP for questionable hardware. However, it is noteworthy that almost none have been able to compile images for Android 7.1 and above that work without hiccups.

Are you saying that simply because a multi-billion dollar company with top engineering talent is able to compile a version of Android that this disprove the comment you're replying to?