Battle of the dirt-cheap tablets: Amazon Fire HD 8 vs. Walmart Onn 8

No one should buy either of them IMO. These super cheap mobile devices are more or less e-waste from day one...

Battle of who do you want to give all your usage data to so they spam you with ads?
There's a reason why they're cheap, never used Walmart ones but the Amazon tablets required extra fees just to not be a permanent billboard on the lock screen.
- And it’s a piece of shit. The only thing the Amazon fire tablets ever did well was shop Amazon. And I stopped shopping on Amazon years ago. These are a waste of money at any price
  
  I played KOTOR on a fire tablet back when they had the Amazon Underground app store and it worked alright, after underground the only apps that worked worth anything were the amazon bundle of shop/kindle/Alexa/etc.
  My last one I gave to a friend (she uses it exclusively as a kindle) after Amazon ended watch party on video and I ended my subscription.
  
  Is it possible to remove the amazon OS, install Linux/Android and get rid of the bloatware or is it OS locked like iPads etc.?
  We don’t have Amazon in my country so I’ve never seen those tablets.
  
  Eh, they're pretty good for kids IMO. Put some restrictions on them so they can only use them for a certain amount of time, and they feel happy that they have their own device without monopolizing/breaking your nicer ones.

god I wish we had a modern Nexus 7, there's like no good 7-8" android tablets
- I was so sad when my Nexus 7 gave up the ghost (quite literally fizzled and nothing more) but I got a solid 10 years out of it.
  I loved how easy they were to work on, the NFC, the unlockable bootloader, the ROM support, headphone jack of course. We didn't know how good we had it then.
- Most phones are that now! To be honest, I say this with three tablets in mt house - I cant believe there is much market for these at all.
- y700

I recently bought a cheap refurbished 10" Amazon Fire specifically for web browsing. The author is spot on when he says it's "obnoxious to the point of hostility."
Amazon places a huge "Register now" nag across the launcher that can't be removed without registering, and even the calculator won't work until you do. Wigets aren't supported by Amazon's launcher and it is impossible to load an alternative. There are a host of other deliberate annoyances Amazon has created to make sure the tablet is used for their purpose rather than your own.
It was only $35, but it's not worth even that much. Amazon has truly made enshittification an art form.
- I've always thought the fact that the LockScreen is just one massive advert tells you everything you need to know about fire tablets!
- There are a host of other deliberate annoyances Amazon has created to make sure the tablet is used for their purpose rather than your own.
  Do you have some examples? Sounds both horrible and interesting.
  
  Icons cannot be removed from the launcher screen, they can only be combined into folder. The folders cannot be hidden or removed. Preinstalled programs cannot be uninstalled or disabled. Nothing works until the tablet is registered with Amazon. There is no app drawer. It's possible to install another launcher, but it's not possible to use it because Amazon has hardwired the home button to their launcher. (There used to be ways around that but Amazon has systematically disabled each of them.) Their Silk browser is terrible. Most every Amazon app provided is terrible.
  I get that it's cheap and there will be significant compromises, but at least some of Amazon's apps should be somewhat comparable to non-Amazon apps.
  I've gotten around some of this by loading the Play store and F-Droid, and blocking Amazon's servers but it's clear that Amazon's tablets are not only cheap but they're really low effort products built for Amazon rather than the purchaser.

Please, just don't. At least unless there's a reasonably not shady ROM on XDA that you feel comfortable flashing.
- I'm reading this on my 8" Onn right now .. (I normally use a fold but my screen finally failed, and I like having a large screen for reading, be it books, manga/manhwa, or Lemmy). I used to be into flashing a while back but I haven't bothered recently. I agree it's a good idea, but it's low on my current list of stuff I need to get done. (Like moving from Windows to Linux on my main pc).
  Edit I do have the Amazon one also, but explaining why I bought the Onn when I already have a Fire HD 8 is just going to make me look worse...

Can they be flashed with Linux?

Old Amazon Kindle was amazing, I read tons of books on it. New Kindle was so clunky to get books on it, set up different accounts, constantly suspicious you were up to something. A totally non-intuitive piece of shit. Amazon design has all the charm of their warehouses.

Are there dirt cheap versions on amazon (but not made by Amazon) i can use?