It’s hard to believe that the original Droid came out just over a year ago. Really, just think about all the amazing handsets that have come along since: the Nexus One, the entirety of Samsung’s Galaxy line, the Nexus S, the Droid Pro, the Droid 2… it’s insane. And for all the folks stuck in a two-year relationship with their Droid, probably pretty enraging.

Fortunately, Google’s been pretty prompt with their software update schedule, ensuring that even on-contract folks get something new and fun every once in a while. And if the carrier’s taking too long to push out an update? The hacking community will get the job done, as they’ve just done with getting Gingerbread onto the original Droid.

Now, before you dive too deep, know this: these are super early builds based off of the recently released source. The upside? Most things that should work, do work. The downside? No Google apps (Gmail, Market, etc). In the past it generally hasn’t taken too long for these things to get ported, but if you need the Google-made apps in your life on a day to day basis, we wouldn’t recommend jumping in just yet.

Otherwise, you can find the instructions for gettin’ the job done right over here.