Booting a temporary Linux system¶

Terminology¶

“Live” Linux image¶

A “Live” Linux image is a fully-featured Linux Operating System intended to become acquainted with the system and try out its features. The main difference between a Live instance and one that is installed onto your computer’s hard drive is that no data is retained on the Live system after turning it off. Live system images are often used for diagnostics and troubleshooting, and for administering other systems from a consistent system baseline.

Host computer¶

A host computer is a device that controls or reprograms a connected target device. In this case, the host computer refers to the computer that is connected to the Librem 5 or Liberty phone, which sends the data to the phone for reflashing. We recommend at least 16 GB of RAM in your host computer to complete this procedure.

Note

PureOS Live is unlikely to boot on anything other than Purism hardware or very old hardware (lacks device firmware, CPU microcode, etc.), so this procedure uses Debian Live to be more accessible for a wider variety of users.

Required materials¶

1x 64-bit (amd64) computer

1x USB flash drive, >= 4 GB capacity

Internet connectivity

Procedure¶

This procedure is intended to help you boot from a Live Linux environment running on a host computer.

This procedure is mainly useful:

If the user does not have, or desire to have, a Linux Operating System installed on their computer
If the user is trying to flash a Librem 5 or Liberty phone, and the flash script does not seem to work on the Linux distribution the user is already using

1. Create bootable media¶

Download the Debian Live GNOME ISO. Click the link “Live Gnome” under “Try Debian live before installing”

Use a tool such as the Fedora Media Writer or Balena Etcher to write the ISO to a USB flash drive.

Warning

This will erase all data from the USB flash drive.

2. Boot into a Live environment¶

Shut down your PC and boot to the USB flash drive. The steps to do this depend on your PC and BIOS vendor. Typically you can press a key such as F1, F2, or F12 during the splash screen to reach a boot menu. You may need to disable Secure Boot from your BIOS settings.

Select the boot device. This should be the ID of the USB drive that you write the ISO onto, earlier in this procedure.

Once you are greeted with a graphical or textual menu to select which environment to load, choose the first option, highlighted by default, to launch the “Live” environment. The menu choice may also be called “Try [distribution name] before installing.” Select this choice to proceed.

If you reach a graphical environment and are able to navigate around, congratulations! You are finished. At this point, you are encouraged to update the software, but this is not required in most situations. Continue to the next section if you wish to update the system software.

3. Update software¶

First, click “Activities” in the upper-left corner, then click the “Show Applications” button (bottom of the toolbar on the left, nine dots)

Find the Terminal application (you may need to scroll down) and open it

Run each of the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

You are now running an updated Linux environment. Congratulations!