How To Connect Kindle Fire HD With Ubuntu 12.10

Last month I bought my new shiny Kindle Fire HD 16GB. After couple of weeks, I tried to transfer some ebooks from my computer (running Ubuntu 12.10) to Kindle Fire HD. When I connected it through the USB. to my surprise, Ubuntu did not recognize Kindle Fire at all. Usually when you connect a USB device, Ubuntu automatically recognizes it and (generally) opens the file manager with the home directory of the newly found device. Earlier, I had similar problem with my Samsung Galaxy S2 not being recognized by Ubuntu which I solved with MTP connection and we will use the same here.

How to fix Kindle Fire HD not recognized by Ubuntu 12.10:

The solution described here is more of a ‘workaround’ than a complete solution. Because this way you will be able to do file transfer and other stuff by connecting your Kindle Fire with Ubuntu but Ubuntu will still not recognize it automatically. If you want to get this partial solution, follow the steps of tutorial:

Step 1: Get MTP library

Download MTP library ‘libmtp’ from Sourceforge. At present the latest version is 1.1.5. You can do little changes in commands if you get newer versions. Once the libraries are downloaded, open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and use the following commands one by one to install it:

cd Downloads
tar xvzf libmtp-1.1.5.tar.gz
cd libmtp-1.1.5
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

Step 2: Install gMTP

gMTP is GTK based GUI for MTP (Media Transfer Protocol). This application will help you in connecting the Kindle (or any other media device) with its easy-to-use graphical interface. To install gMTP in Ubuntu, use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gmtp

Step 3: Connect Kindle to Ubuntu:

Now we are all set up here. Connect the Kindle Fire to your computer with a USB. Now open gMTP by searching it in Unity dash:

 The interface of the gMTP will look like the picture below. Click on the ‘Connect‘ button:

When it recognizes the device, it will explore the drive in the following manner:

When you need to copy something in to or from the Kindle Fire, you can simply copy paste it in this interface.