I have an Amazon Kindle and wanted to install CyanogenMod on it. The full installation took about 10 hours because of lack luster instructions. I detail below the steps that are outdated to save you time. Below is my experience.

You need to determine the type of Kindle that you have. The “About” settings does not tell you but you can determine based on the serial number.

CyanogenMod has a Wiki page search to find the device you have. This was mine for Kindle’s Otter.

The instructions are very Windows based and not good for Linux. They are also dated since the Kindle Fire 1st Gen is now a dated device. I had to do this installation in Windows 10. The most annoying part is getting the drivers correct and having to restart your PC to disable driver authentication.

Setting up your Windows 10 box is important because you will need ADB and the Java SDK to continue. This will take a while to download and install.

The instructions provide Option 1 and 2 for installing Kindle Fire Drivers. I found that #1 is easier but #2 is better. I went with #1, but if you go with #2, in Android Studio, select Configure>SDK Manager and then pick at the bottom to open a standalone SDK Manager. Follow the instructions.

When rooting your device, save your work before restarting. To download Saferoot, the link for the file is at the end of the first post. Plug your phone in before launching install.bat. Wait for the SuperSU message to appear asking for root. (THAT WAS AWESOME!) Restart phone. Disconnect the file transfer and see if SuperSU needs to be updated. Renable the file transfer and continue the .bat Do all of this before continuing.

You have to do the manual installation of fastboot. I could not get the automatic installation of the recovery and bootloader to work. The script is old and websites it tries to download files from are broken, along with other parts of the .bat are not update for newer drivers.

Download the One Zip Kindle.Fire.fastboot.Files.zip but download the updated TWRP for the Kindle, the “blaze” one. When running the recovery steps in the manual, replace the old TWRP with the new one. Why? The TWRP in that zip file will not install CM 11. It does not have all the functions. You need a newer TWRP to successfully install CM 11.

Something I learned is that fastboot is different than ADB. Your ADB devices commands will not return results. If fastboot is not recognizing your device, turn off the Kindle (hold the power button for many seconds), plug in the USB cord to your computer and Kindle, and then power on the Kindle. When you get FireFireFire installed, the device will initially boot into fastboot, which is nice.