Now that it’s possible to root the Amazon Fire TV, it’s possible to do some pretty funky things with Amazon’s $99 TV box… like replace the operating system with Fedora 20 Linux.

That’s what developer Rob Clark figured out how to do shortly after the Fire TV launched… but up until recently it would have been tough for anyone to follow in his footsteps since it wasn’t easy to root the device.

Now it is… but installing Fedora or another operating system still takes a bit of know-how.

fedora tv

Rob Clark wrote this week about how he discovered a way to root the Fire TV a few months ago and then used that vulnerability to load Fedora on the box.

These days rooting the Fire TV is as easy as running towelroot. You can find step-by-step instructions at AFTV News.

Running Fedora instead of Fire OS (Amazon’s custom version of Android), is a lot trickier at this point, but you can check out Clark’s github page for notes about his progress.

While the process isn’t exactly user-friendly it shows that like most smartphones, tablets, and TV boxes that ship these days, you’re not necessarily stuck running the software that came with your device when you buy a Fire TV. Just don’t expect Amazon to honor your warranty if you break something and try to send back a box that has no operating system.

via /r/Android

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7 replies on “Fedora Linux running on the Amazon Fire TV (video)”

  1. Sad that this guy has been running since april yet the method has not been disclosed yet. These sorts of bad reporting make folks run out and buy a unit thinking they can run linux on it and 6 months later the methods are still not public.

  2. Fedora with KDE or gnome is very usable for multi-tasking and getting work done. I use Fedora 20 with KDE as my desktop environment. It requires a good bit of setup and understanding of the terminal but once you get over that hurdle it’s extremely smooth. I use it for editing spreadsheets, managing multiple web based applications, all things flash, and everything else. It’s an extremely solid operating system that I recommend to anyone who is trying to get their feet wet with Linux.

  3. How usable is the Fedora desktop? Are the apps responsive? Can it multi-task well? I could only find this video on youtube (no others).

    1. I m also very interested in getting (any sort of) linux to this box…since is now shipped in germany and i got one 🙂

      responsive desktop dosent really matter to my, because i would youse the box as a IPTV proxy (TVheadend 🙂 vdr or something like that) with enough power to run as a “very small, low power” nas at my house
      so…lets go on with this great work !

  4. is the Asus Chromebox worth the $80 more than the Fire TV, for a xbmc front-end? I would expect the Celeron 2955u to have better software decoding ability. How is the fedora/ubuntu support for ARM? Is it just as good as x86?

    1. Get the Amazon Fire, it is a BEAST with XBMC! Never a single glitch, especially with the SBMC version!

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