Is it the .img.xz file that I need?
To be clear, you understand that you are doing that on another computer (typically a desktop or laptop), not on the phone itself?
If âyesâ then what distro and version do you have on your desktop / laptop?
Sounds odd. The certificate works for me, and gives
Validity
Not Before Sat, 24 May 2025 19:54:03 GMT
Not After Fri, 22 Aug 2025 19:54:02 GMT
i.e. comfortably within the validity period - and the CAs up the chain are likewise. You could, I guess, get the error that you got if the time on your computer is wrong. Please check the time.
But you shouldnât be getting unmet dependencies anyway.
I understand that you may now wish to persevere with booting from SD card now that you have got past the issue of choosing an ISO for the wrong CPU architecture (x86 v ARM).
That will work but you need to unxz the file yourself before doing anything with it.
Thank you very much! Iâm now able to boot from the card. Now I have a real noob question: how do I overwrite the hard drive of the phone from this image?
I did not understand that, no.
It looks like the phoneâs date and time went awry amid my tinkering today, so that could indeed be the cause here, though Iâve been having the issues with updating for many months, seemingly as a result of trying to configure anbox. If I donât get things working from my SD card Iâll pursue this avenue.
I didnât do that, but I assume since the file that I burned to my card is bootable that it must have been done under the hood by my disks utility.
Actually, yes, you are right. If you use Gnome Disks to restore a disk image then the disk image can have been compressed (as a .xz file) and Gnome Disks will then automatically behind the scenes decompress the disk image before use.
As such, I should have written: That will work but you need to unxz the file yourself before doing anything with it except restoring it with Gnome Disks.
I could be wrong but I donât think Gnome Disks can create such a compressed disk image. So this may be an inconsistency in behaviour and leads to ..
Also note that disk images created in certain ways may be compressed but the compression was not done with xz in which case I suspect that Gnome Disks wonât recognise or handle automatically the decompression when you restore the disk image.
Should I simply copy the data on the card over to the phoneâs hard drive with dd or a similar command?
In the absence of a response from the person who is suggesting that you take this approach ⌠what I would do, once booted from SD card, is get the same (compressed) disk image file onto the SD card and then use Gnome Disks to restore the disk image onto the eMMC drive. That is, use what you know how to do and what works. However dd should be fine too but then see my earlier comment about needing to unxz.
I havenât tested this though. In fact, I have never booted from SD card. My SD card is not bootable and contains only user data (media). I use Jumpdrive and/or reflash for this kind of thing - which is fine. We are all different. 
Iâm very different, no argument from me.
I finally downloaded the Crimson Alpha the other day and wrote it to a fresh 256GB Sandisk Ultra I had laying around. Looked fine from âDisksâ on Linux Mint, so I shutdown the L5 Evergreen, inserted into the SD slot and powered up holding âvolume downâ⌠and it booted to the eMMC.
When Byzantium came up, I immediately saw an SD card symbol on the notifications bar â it was greyed out and had an âxâ in the lower left corner. Not deterred, I opened âDisksâ and it looked OK and the partitions were already mounted.
Encouraged, I opened âFilesâ and was able to browse the SD 4.1 GB partition and opened bootstrap.log file, which showed that it was indeed Crimson dated 2025-08-11.
My uboot shows 2019.04-g17a6c2261c, which I believe I confirmed over a year ago to be good to boot from SD.
Shutdown and booted again⌠green light, orange light, long pause, repeat (ad infinitum).
It tried this a few times, varying how long I held the âvolume downâ (trying to remember how it worked on my PinePhone) but no joy. Seemed to be pretty inconsistent.
What obvious thing am I missing? 
Citation needed? How was that confirmed? By booting something from SD card on your phone? By searching in this forum?
I would update uboot.
Ugh⌠typo.
ââŚwhich I believe I confirmed over a year ago to be a viable uboot version to boot from SD.â
Yes, this forum⌠or somewhere the forum pointed to.
Update: Now the x SD card on the notification bar is gone. I can still browse the card, but it still doesnât boot.
Havenât changed my setup in quite a while but hereâs an attached video of the boot eMMC to LUKS passphrase, followed by unencrypted SD card boot:
The eMMC is on Byzantium(LUKS) and the SD is on some hodgepodge attempt at installing Crimson and/or âlandingâ from last year.
uSD size: 1 TB (bought it from the store down the road)
uSD â/etc/apt/sources.listâ:
deb http://repo.pureos.net/pureos crimson main
deb http://repo.pureos.net/pureos crimson-security main
deb http://repo.pureos.net/pureos crimson-updates main
deb http://repo.pureos.net/pureos crimson-updates-proposed main
Using cat /proc/cmdline can you post your uboot version (in particular when booted from eMMC i.e. normal boot)?
e.g. mine starts with u_boot_version=2022.10-g956aa590c9 ...
uboot version on eMMC:
u_boot_version=2022.10-g956aa590c9
Iâm pretty sure that is the âmissing SIMâ icon
Yes, mine too. This is exactly what I needed to see.
Yours lights green only when you hit power, then volume down separately in sequence.
At power on, mine lights orange, then flashes green, then orange until I get the Librem 5 splash followed by the LUKS screen. Ah! Thatâs because I had it plugged into power⌠and red+green=orange. Duh! If I unplug, it get the same eMMC/LUKS boot sequence as you.
When trying to boot from the uSD, I was hitting power and volume down simultaneously (because thatâs how my PinePhone works). When I do it sequentially, like you, the splash screen does not appear immediately after the green light goes out at approximately 10 seconds. My green light stays on forever, even if I release the volume down button.
Quite so⌠I found that when I pulled the tray, the SIM flung out! I had to look all over my desk before I found it.
OK, I think my next step is to flash my uboot to your version or newer.