I'm running Ubuntu 11.10, and when I connect my Kindle Fire to my computer via micro usb, it is not recognized automatically. Other usb devices, such as my ipod and digital camera, are recognized just fine.

It does not appear to be a usb power issue, since the Kindle Fire wakes up from sleeping when it is plugged in. I never get the message on the Kindle telling me it is ready to accept files from the computer, though.

Here are the last 15 lines of dmesg after plugging the kindle in:

jeff@prime:~$ dmesg | tail -n 15
[45918.269671] ieee80211 phy0: wl_ops_bss_info_changed: arp filtering: enabled true, count 1 (implement)
[45929.072149] wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
[46743.224217] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd
[46743.364623] scsi8 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0
[46744.366102] scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Amazon   Kindle           0001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[46744.366356] scsi: killing requests for dead queue
[46744.372494] scsi: killing requests for dead queue
[46744.384510] scsi: killing requests for dead queue
[46744.392348] scsi: killing requests for dead queue
[46744.392731] scsi: killing requests for dead queue
[46744.396853] scsi: killing requests for dead queue
[46744.397214] scsi: killing requests for dead queue
[46744.400795] scsi: killing requests for dead queue
[46744.401589] sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[46744.407520] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

And here are my mounted filesystems:

jeff@prime:~$ df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1            298594984 174663712 108763480  62% /
udev                   1407684         4   1407680   1% /dev
tmpfs                   566924       896    566028   1% /run
none                      5120         0      5120   0% /run/lock
none                   1417308       300   1417008   1% /run/shm
/home/jeff/.Private  298594984 174663712 108763480  62% /home/jeff

I should note that, since I got Dropbox working on my Kindle, the usb is no longer strictly necessary, but as a matter of principle I'd love to get it working.