I have been using CyanogenMod for a few weeks and am currently running 4.1.9.2 without an issue (no crashes, FCs etc).
Many users complain on the XDA-Developers forum about issues, but I truly believe that if people followed some basics, there would not be so many problems in the first place.
I have now upgraded from 4.0.4 to 4.1.7 to 4.1.8 and then 4.1.9 without having to do a wipe (and suffering data loss / re-install) by doing the following:
- Clear cache before installs: (boot into recovery and drop to terminal)
mount system
mount system/sd
rm -rf system/sd/dalvik-cache
umount system/sd
umount system
reboot recovery
- Upgrade to the latest firmware
- Reboot (be patient – it will take about 10 minutes. you can always remote attach via ./adb shell logcat to watch progress)
- Wait (don’t touch the phone until remote logcat has finished)
- Reboot into recovery and drop into terminal
- Fix permissions via fix_permissions
- Reboot & Enjoy the new firmware