So, I have a verizon google nexus (SCH-i515) phone which is rooted with the bootloader unlocked.
I have been looking around, but based on your guys experience, who has the best ROMs for this phone. It is on the 4.1.2 right now, but I am thinking of moving to kit kat and KLM etc as this would be my secondary playing around phone. I ask since even in Linux there are different variations and I ended up liking Linux MINT which is very close to windows and is updated frequently.
Thinking of updates, are there ROMs (nightly ROMs???) that would update themselves like from kit kat to key lime pie and beyond as Google release them and developers work on them? Or is it like moving from Windows 7 to windows 8 with brand new installations?
Dont have the phone so cant comment on it but can confirm about linux mint as I have been using it for the past 2 years at work and home.
I think google search will get you some answers on the ROM's and updates. The first search I did on the nightly's is not that it updates itself but its more of a beta version.
Its a Galaxy Nexus made by Samsung with a TI OMAP Chipset, and the latest ROM for it from google (factory image) is Android 4.3, google will not update this phone beyond 4.3 as the TI Omap SoC (System on Chip - processor, graphics processor package) maker TI stopped working on mobile chipsets, google cant get the updated binary blobs for newer kernels, and they cant update the phone. All the KitKat (4.4.2) ROMs for it are hacked up job (some leaked an internal testing binary blobs and the development started on that), they are not stable enough and are power hungry, so i wont recommend them (there is a CyanogenMod based KitKat ROM that i personally tested, its stable but got horrible battery). Stay with the Official factory image, its the best and there are not much new changes with KitKat (except the translucent status bar).
Nightly Roms are those ROMs that are in rapid development, mostly, there will be an automatic build every night that you have to flash it yourself (Nightly ROMS doesnt support OTA updates).
Unlike PC's mobile phones have dedicated partitions (Radio, Recovery,System, Data, User Data, Cache etc), when you flash a ROM, most of the time you are formatting and flashing the System partition only, so your Applications and Data will remain safe.