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Kindle Fire Notes

(last updated

Shopping Advice

I have a Kindle Fire tablet. For those who don’t, I would really suggest buying a standard Android tablet instead, unless all you want to do is buy things from Amazon. Or if you actually want to read with your e-reader, buy a normal Kindle with the e-ink screen.

Some of us are stuck with Kindle Fires, which are annoying devices that sort of, kind of, not really run Android. Being really a desktop person at heart, I found it difficult to figure out how to make my Kindle useful.

Here are some useful tricks for technical people who want to get make the most of this strange device.

Firefox

Let’s replace the default Silk browser with Firefox, so we feel a little more at home.

Standard Firefox for Android is not available for Kindles, but there are two options:

  1. Firefox Aurora is the nightly build of Firefox for Android. I have this on my Kindle, and it’s exciting to be on the bleeding edge of things (thought that could hurt you).
  2. Firefox from the F-Droid store. I haven’t tried this only because Aurora works just fine.

Unofficial Application Sources

F-Droid

F-Droid is a collection of open source applications for Android-based devices. Since Fire OS is based upon Android, many of these applications can run on a Kindle. I recommend installing the F-Droid package manager for a quick source of nice open source Android applications.

Transferring Files of the Device

To a Linux System

Linux users on most major operating systems can install the gmtp package for a graphical transfer utility. This program allows you to transfer files off the Kindle over USB.