The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s content-subsidized tablet, has been arriving to the delight of people all across the U.S. The heavily-skinned Gingerbread Android device has left many questions in the minds of the Android and Gadget community. For instance, will we be able to install apps outside of the Amazon Appstore? How about using adb? And, of course, the most important question of all - can the Fire be rooted?

If you remember, Amazon said it wouldn't do anything special to prevent rooting or interfere with those who want to customize their devices in other ways (although the status of the bootloader is unknown at this time). It looks like they stayed true to their word, as the Kindle Fire allows easy installation of 3rd party apps out of the box, adb can be used with a small tweak, and... drumroll - an one-click root method is now available.

3rd Party Apps

If you want to use install 3rd party apps, just allow installation from unknown sources in Settings -> Device menu.

Photo credit: Business Insider

Xda is already full of discussions of what works and what doesn't work, including Reader, Facebook, Gmail, Books, and other apps. Now the million dollar question is whether we'll see the Android Market any time soon.

ADB

ADB access could be established from a Mac or a Windows machine. ADB, which stands for Android Debug Bridge, lets you interact with an Android device to copy files, install apps, read logs, run shell commands, and much more. You will need the Android SDK installed and then add the Vendor ID for Amazon's Lab126 (0x1949) to the adb_usb.ini file.

You can find detailed instructions for Windows here and for Mac here.

If you want to use ADB to install apps, be sure to allow installation from unknown sources as discussed above.

Root

Now that adb access is working, it turns out rooting the Fire is quite simple, and the infamous SuperOneClick does the job. For instructions, see this discussion over at xda (thanks, Mitchell!).

Already gotten your Amazon Fire or still on the fence? Check out our meta-review of the new $199 tablet. Not bad for the price so far, isn't it?