Is there a much of a noticeable difference between ICS and Jellybean?
 

I use Cyanogenmod on my i9300 (international SGS3), and its Jellybean support is nightly only. I've been fine with it but lately it's just too buggy and I want to use something stable. Unfortunately, the only stable CM for my phone is 9.1, which corresponds to Android 4.0, Icecream Sandwich.

If I move over to 9.1, will the difference between JB and ICS be very noticeable to a user?

If you move off CM back to android anything, you effectively lose the use of root. That's the biggest difference. The 'su' utility does not exist in Android. All app[s that require root lose it also.

I ran Android 1.5 (then CM-6.0) for a long time on an old HTC Dream. Mail, maps, youtube, playing music were all fine. Navigation was flaky, but that was more the radio than the software. I can't imagine a huge difference. The stuff they added later is stuff you usually don't want/need. But root is a big one if you use root.

You CAN root stock android
of course you will want to add some extras like busybox, and if you can't compile yourself there are 'apps' on the market which will add busybox for you.


Anyway, ICS vs JellyBean
JellyBean wins,

go back to a nightly you considered stable..
Only flash nightlies monthly ;), and revert to backup if it 'sux'


Your device looks 'active'
http://review.cyanogenmod.org/#/q/pr...sung_i9300,n,z
so bugs will get squashed

obviously the best place to be is
http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/forum/6...yexperimental/
Full of 'flash addicts', but you may get some sense from some of the posts

You can root android, but at the expense and pain of of redesigning it. Every update then becomes a riak to root. You're better sticking with a mod than doing that, imho. If you find a changelog, you can see what's added/fixed. Usually not a lot. Do you need 9.1, or can you run with an earlier CM?