Hacking Question Best CFW?

detox32

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usually I have always dealt with ps3 and its cfw and hombrew, so I wanted to ask a question, I hope it's not repetitive.
what is the cfw for switch following the criteria of: .
1. versatility,
2. stable,
3. brick risk,
4. possibility of tools?


thanks, close the thread if I'm wrong.
 

Lacius

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usually I have always dealt with ps3 and its cfw and hombrew, so I wanted to ask a question, I hope it's not repetitive.
what is the cfw for switch following the criteria of: .
1. versatility,
2. stable,
3. brick risk,
4. possibility of tools?


thanks, close the thread if I'm wrong.
  1. Versatility: Atmosphere
  2. Stable: Atmosphere
  3. Low brick risk: Atmosphere or ReiNX
  4. Possibility of tools: It depends on the tool(s).
 
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RHOPKINS13

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1. Versatility: Currently SX OS, based on XCI support and Emunand. That being said, Emunand is coming soon™ to Atmosphere, and there have been arguments for a long time about whether XCI loading makes SX OS better than Atmosphere or whether it's a feature worth paying for.
2. Stable: All CFWs are pretty stable as far as I'm concerned. The important thing is to use a microSD formatted as FAT32 rather than exFAT, especially if you plan on using homebrew that writes to the SD card, like emulators.
3. Brick Risk: I don't think this is much of a factor. Just make sure to keep a good NAND backup. There are also instructions available for making a "fresh" NAND dump from scratch (which could easily get you banned if you use online, but it's better than having a bricked switch if you need to resort to it.) At this point, if a NAND restore can't fix it, it's probably a hardware problem.
4. Possibility of Tools: ReiNX and Kosmos both have tool kits, plus there are plenty of homebrew "tools" available that work on multiple CFWs. SX OS has ripped off and "re-branded" various homebrew tools as well.

It's mostly a matter of preference. If you want to be able to run .XCI files (which means being able to run cartridge dumps directly, without installing them first), or you want to use emunand and don't feel like waiting for Atmosphere to release it, then pay the extra money for SX OS. Otherwise, Atmosphere, ReiNX, and Kosmos (which uses Atmosphere) are all functionally about the same, with relatively minor differences between them.

If you like manually setting everything up and want to feel in control over everything on your Switch (like me) use Atmosphere, and then you can set up all the sysmodules / homebrew / patches you want.

If you're not interested in that and just want an easy setup, use Kosmos. It comes preconfigured with sysmodules for cheats, a background FTP server, overclocking (if you want it), Amiibo emulation, and more. You will have to manually install sigpatches if you want to load backups, but that's an easy thing to do.

Also there's a very handy chart you may want to look at here: https://guide.sdsetup.com/comparingcfws
 

Kubas_inko

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1. Versatility: Currently SX OS, based on XCI support and Emunand. That being said, Emunand is coming soon™ to Atmosphere, and there have been arguments for a long time about whether XCI loading makes SX OS better than Atmosphere or whether it's a feature worth paying for.
2. Stable: All CFWs are pretty stable as far as I'm concerned. The important thing is to use a microSD formatted as FAT32 rather than exFAT, especially if you plan on using homebrew that writes to the SD card, like emulators.
3. Brick Risk: I don't think this is much of a factor. Just make sure to keep a good NAND backup. There are also instructions available for making a "fresh" NAND dump from scratch (which could easily get you banned if you use online, but it's better than having a bricked switch if you need to resort to it.) At this point, if a NAND restore can't fix it, it's probably a hardware problem.
4. Possibility of Tools: ReiNX and Kosmos both have tool kits, plus there are plenty of homebrew "tools" available that work on multiple CFWs. SX OS has ripped off and "re-branded" various homebrew tools as well.

It's mostly a matter of preference. If you want to be able to run .XCI files (which means being able to run cartridge dumps directly, without installing them first), or you want to use emunand and don't feel like waiting for Atmosphere to release it, then pay the extra money for SX OS. Otherwise, Atmosphere, ReiNX, and Kosmos (which uses Atmosphere) are all functionally about the same, with relatively minor differences between them.

If you like manually setting everything up and want to feel in control over everything on your Switch (like me) use Atmosphere, and then you can set up all the sysmodules / homebrew / patches you want.

If you're not interested in that and just want an easy setup, use Kosmos. It comes preconfigured with sysmodules for cheats, a background FTP server, overclocking (if you want it), Amiibo emulation, and more. You will have to manually install sigpatches if you want to load backups, but that's an easy thing to do.

Also there's a very handy chart you may want to look at here: https://guide.sdsetup.com/comparingcfws
1. KIPs and custom sysmodules make atmosphere way more versatile (imho).
3. Atmosphere makes prodinfo backup on boot (so that's nice). Otherwise, all have the same brick risk.
 

chaoskagami

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Otherwise, all have the same brick risk.

Not quite. Atmosphere has a lower brick risk than the others, since it prevents CAL0 writes by default (improper overwrites would brick the console.) SX OS does no such thing, and ReiNX makes a conscious choice in not implementing this behavior.
 
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RHOPKINS13

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Not quite. Atmosphere has a lower brick risk than the others, since it prevents CAL0 writes by default (improper overwrites would brick the console.) SX OS does no such thing, and ReiNX makes a conscious choice in not implementing this behavior.

Perhaps this prevents a semi-brick, but CFW could still run fine with an overwritten CAL0, and a NAND restore would still fix it in any case.
 

MasterJ360

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Never heard of anyone getting bricked based on cfw to be honest. Oh right the brick code that TX laid out for hackers. Well a mouse got caught in a mouse trap is the best way to describe that old incident. Other than that user base bricks are very low so far on any cfw. All cfw are pretty good it just depends do you want spend a little money on getting things early like emunand or play backups off an external hdd and since you have JB ps3 you might want that ability again. If you want games on the go and don't care about external hdd play stick to free cfw like atmosphere or Reinx
 
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PHiLiPZ

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it just depends do you want spend a little money on getting things early
It would be nice to add that if you want the support of newest firmware Atmosphere is a better choice.
I agree that having the newest firmware may not be necessary. But during my short time here I read so many posts about “me/gf/brother/dog updated to the newest firmware, what should I do?”.

SX is a commercial project with a single purpose to earn money for its developers (that is fine by me). Since all Switches sold in almost a year now are already patched the market is not growing. Actually, most patchable Switches whose users wanted to hack did that already, so I reckon not too many new SX licenses are being sold any more. Thus the motivation for investing in development of such commercial project is vanishing, leading eventually to cancellation of the project, meaning no new fw versions support.
 

chaoskagami

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Perhaps this prevents a semi-brick, but CFW could still run fine with an overwritten CAL0, and a NAND restore would still fix it in any case.

On a console without RCM capabilities, that would be a full brick.

I don't want to get in the habit of calling bricks semi-bricks, because once more readily available software exploits become available it might confuse people into thinking they can recover from it with a patched console.

Never heard of anyone getting bricked based on cfw to be honest. Oh right the brick code that TX laid out for hackers. Well a mouse got caught in a mouse trap is the best way to describe that old incident. Other than that user base bricks are very low so far on any cfw. All cfw are pretty good it just depends do you want spend a little money on getting things early like emunand or play backups off an external hdd and since you have JB ps3 you might want that ability again. If you want games on the go and don't care about external hdd play stick to free cfw like atmosphere or Reinx

First, brickers are not "mouse traps." They're malware. Period. It's the equivalent of hiding `sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /` in some otherwise innocuous shell script. No matter how you slice it, it's uncool. Just show an error message about violating licensing and abort. Repeat, brickers are not cool. There is no excuse for them.

And actually, there've been two incidents; the TX bricker, and a fake version of Pokemon Let's GO that was circulating on ROM sites. The CAL0 protection won't remotely help with the TX thing, since that occurs in RCM, but is designed to mitigate the latter type.
 
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