Rooting a Nexus 7

CAIIB results were announced yesterday and I was lucky enough to clear the exam. So to commemorate the day, I decided to root my Nexus 7 and flash CyanogenMod ROM. Unlike the process of rooting my HTC phone, rooting a Nexus device is fairly a straightforward procedure. There are numerous pre-built toolkits available that can reduce the whole procedure to few clicks. The whole process was over in less that an hour majority of which was spent to download the CM 10.0 ROM (150MB) and GAPPS (90MB).

So this was how it all went down:

1. Downloaded Wug's Nexus Root Toolkit` v1.6.2 from XDA Forums: It can download all the required ADB drivers, Unlock the bootloader and then Root it with 3 clicks!
2. After unlocking and rooting, flashed CM 10.0 based on Jelly Bean 4.1.2 (at that time I didn't had the heart to download a less stable monthly snapshot build of CM 10.1 based on Jelly Bean 4.2)
3. Flashed GAPPS compatible with CM 10.0
4. Installed all the apps and restarted the customizations done in earlier version
5. After reverting to previous state (apps+ customizations) , took a backup of apps and data using Titanium Backup (thats one major benefit of rooting. Titanium backup is a really cool bit of software)
6. Updated to CM 10.1 running JB 4.2
7. Updated to GAPPS compatible with CM 10.1

Shown below is the screen shot of CM 10.0 with Nova Launcher, Power Toggles Widget, Minimalist Text Widget and Eye in Sky Weather widget. Icons for dock and app shortcuts are taken from Metro Station Icon Pack. Wallpaper is stock CM 10.X. Click on the picture to zoom in.