Backfire TV - Take back control of your Firestick by andreabenini

Take Back Control of Your Amazon Firestick.
Tired of Ads, a cluttered launcher, and buttons you can't change? BackFireTV is a project to liberate your Firestick from Amazon's walled garden and make it truly yours. They call it the firestick. To fight fire with fire, you need a backfire.

That's the soul of BackFireTV. To truly liberate it and return back to its core capabilities this project uses a linux script, one Android app and ADB access against Amazon's restrictive policies. We leverage these internal tools to create a "backfire" against the incessant ads and locked ecosystem, transforming your Firestick back into the useful, customizable device it was always meant to be.

The Problem

The Amazon Firestick starts as an excellent, affordable streaming device. However, Amazon's aggressive Ad policies and restrictive ecosystem have turned it into an increasingly annoying and a less useful device. It comes with frustrations:
- Messy interface. The less the better was probably the best slogan for the early device, its interface is now cluttered and chaotic when you probably need just a couple of buttons for starting your favorite applications.
- Constant Ads. The default launcher is filled with commercials and sponsored content.
- Bloated Interface. A cluttered and slow home screen you can't customize.
- Locked Buttons. Dedicated buttons for services you don't use (like popular streaming providers) that can't be easily changed.
- Lack of Control. A closed ecosystem that limits what you can do.

I could overlook them all if the device was provided for free. But since you pay and you own it it should be legit to do whatever you please in your personal device and network.

The Solution: BackFireTV

BackFireTV hacks your Firestick to give you back control. It uses a clever system of DHCP hooks and ADB (Android Debug Bridge) commands to remotely manage your device, block annoyances and customize your experience from the moment it connects to your network.
The dhcp lease action starts a nohup command on the firestick and forgets about it, the daemon then manages running programs, hacks remote control features and keys. It can be paused or resumed, no rooting required.

Features

• Custom Launcher. Automatically replaces the default Amazon launcher with the lean and clean Wolf Launcher.
• Ad-Free Experience:. Blocks annoying ads and sponsored content for a cleaner interface.
• Button Remapping. Reprogram the physical buttons on your remote. For example, make the Disney+ button launch Kodi or your favorite application.
• Works on every firestick 4K. Tested on: Firestick TV 4k (1st/2nd gen), Firestick TV 4k Max.
• No rooting required. It runs on basic user permissions with standard privileges. It also works on standard devices: latest firmware, with or without external hw attached (usb storage, network cards, usb hubs, ...).
• No banned apps. This hack relies on the linux subsystem underneath, no matter what Amazon does on the AppStore, this script can always be sideloaded and cannot be banned (no fingerprints on android app layer).
• Toggle to default anytime. Standard amazon launcher can still be toggled any time for administrative tasks or just as a comparison. Feel free to manage it as usual and switch back to

Create an Android app for Syncthing as part of the Syncthing Tray project by mkittler

Description

There's already an app but code/features already in Syncthing Tray could be reused to create a nicer app with additional features like managing ignore patterns more easily. The additional UI code for the app could then in turn be re-used by other parts of Syncthing Tray, e.g. to implement further steps in the wizard as requested by some users. This way one "UI wrapper codebase" could serve GNU/Linux, Windows and Android (and in theory MacOS) at the same time which is kind of neat.

Goals

• DONE: Learn more about development for Android and development of UIs with Qt Quick
• DONE: Create an experimental app reusing as much existing Syncthing Tray code as possible
• DONE: Build Syncthing as a library also for Android and use it in the app (already done but needs further testing and integration with the rest of the app configuration)
• DONE: Update the Syncthing Tray website, documentation
• DONE: Extend the app so it has at least a start page and an import
• Update forum thread
• DONE: Upload an experimental build on GitHub
• Extend the Syncthing API to download single files on demand (instead of having to sync the whole directory or use ignore patterns)
• Bring back parts of the newly developed mobile UI back to Syncthing Tray on the desktop to fully benefit from the cross-platform development
  • Add UI to add/edit folders and devices in desktop tray app
  • Add UI to show out-of-sync items in desktop tray app
  • Create an alternative "AppWindow" tailored for desktop platforms reusing UI components developed for the mobile app

Resources

• Android SDK/NDK and emulator
• Qt Quick

Testing and adding GNU/Linux distributions on Uyuni by juliogonzalezgil

Join the Gitter channel! https://gitter.im/uyuni-project/hackweek

Uyuni is a configuration and infrastructure management tool that saves you time and headaches when you have to manage and update tens, hundreds or even thousands of machines. It also manages configuration, can run audits, build image containers, monitor and much more!

Currently there are a few distributions that are completely untested on Uyuni or SUSE Manager (AFAIK) or just not tested since a long time, and could be interesting knowing how hard would be working with them and, if possible, fix whatever is broken.

For newcomers, the easiest distributions are those based on DEB or RPM packages. Distributions with other package formats are doable, but will require adapting the Python and Java code to be able to sync and analyze such packages (and if salt does not support those packages, it will need changes as well). So if you want a distribution with other packages, make sure you are comfortable handling such changes.

No developer experience? No worries! We had non-developers contributors in the past, and we are ready to help as long as you are willing to learn. If you don't want to code at all, you can also help us preparing the documentation after someone else has the initial code ready, or you could also help with testing :-)

The idea is testing Salt and Salt-ssh clients, but NOT traditional clients, which are deprecated.

To consider that a distribution has basic support, we should cover at least (points 3-6 are to be tested for both salt minions and salt ssh minions):

1. Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
2. Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap scritp, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator)
3. Package management (install, remove, update...)
4. Patching
5. Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
6. Salt remote commands
7. Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement
8. Bonus point: sumaform enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/sumaform)
9. Bonus point: Documentation (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni-docs)
10. Bonus point: testsuite enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni/tree/master/testsuite)

If something is breaking: we can try to fix it, but the main idea is research how supported it is right now. Beyond that it's up to each project member how much to hack :-)

• If you don't have knowledge about some of the steps: ask the team
• If you still don't know what to do: switch to another distribution and keep testing.

This card is for EVERYONE, not just developers. Seriously! We had people from other teams helping that were not developers, and added support for Debian and new SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE Leap versions :-)

Pending

Debian 13

The new version of the beloved Debian GNU/Linux OS

Seems to be a Debian 12 derivative, so adding it could be quite easy.

• [ ] Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
• W] Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap script, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator)
• [ ] Package management (install, remove, update...)
• [ ] Patching (if patch information is available, could require writing some code to parse it, but IIRC we have support for Ubuntu already). Probably not for Debian as IIRC we don't support patches yet.
• [ ] Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
• [ ] Salt remote commands
• [ ] Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement
• [ ] Bonus point: sumaform enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/sumaform)
• [ ] Bonus point: Documentation (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni-docs)