I’ve never run cyanogen, although I hear it’s great, so I have no
knowledge of its comparability with hydrakernel. I like to keep my phone
very close to stock because I need it to be very stable and reliable for
work purposes so I’m a huge fan of Virtuousrom
(http://www.virtuousrom.com/). Virtuoursrom 3.2 + their own custom
kernel is very stable with good battery life.