Q. Can I deploy Linux using System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM)?

A. Yes and no. The built-in OS deployment technology in SCCM is based on the Windows Imaging (WIM) format, which is in turn based on the NTFS file system generally used only by Windows OSs. You can't deploy a non-NTFS OS such as Linux OSs from a WIM deployment technology.

However, you do have options. SCCM isn't limited to deploying WIM images. The task sequences you create using SCCM can perform custom functions and call other applications, so it would be possible to create a custom task sequence to partition the disk and then deploy a custom image using a different imaging technology, such as Symantec Ghost.

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