Not a fan.
Sadly, they have to be.
We can't ship Google Apps due to licensing restrictions (and even if we could, a very vocal subset of users probably wouldn't like that), but not upgrading Google Apps (and/or select other addons/components, for that matter) during a major version bump breaks the installation beyond repair.
It's unfortunate that this is the case, but there is no way around telling users to do major version upgrades manually instead of doing it all in-system.
Big fan of Lineage, btw. Before getting a Pixel, Lineage (and its innumerable spinoffs) allowed me to use the excellent hardware of Xiaomi phones without their godawful software.
I'd be happy if the process were always a full reset followed by choosing what to run until the next full reset.. And maybe it is (?) but I never understand what people are talking about in android land.
It was very annoying, but that was 6 years ago (2018). They learned a lesson and I don't think they've done "April fools" pranks since then.
I switched to GrapheneOS for my primary device, but keep LineageOS on a tablet and 2 development devices, highly recommended, even if your device is supported by the manufacturer, LineageOS is probably much better, more secure, and provides better privacy options.
* <https://jordemort.dev/blog/why-android-cant-use-cdc-ethernet...>
Regardless let me tell you that: AOSP fixed it for Android V!
Can you use the ordinary app store to download apps as you can on a normal Android phone? Or do you need to do some shuffle of downloading them on a PC and transferring some kind of apk file to install it on the phone manually.
Do most apps work 'out of the box', or are there incompatibilities?
Some people prefer to exclude it for privacy reasons. I don't know if the official Lineage builds include it, as I am one such person, but it's available here: https://opengapps.org/
