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.

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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