Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Best Way to Image and Deploy Dual-Boot Macintosh?

Posted by Cliff on from the going-both-ways dept.

macpulse asks: "What is the best way to image and deploy dual-boot Intel Macintosh desktops in an Educational environment? Our organization is getting ready to purchase dozens of new Intel Macs for each campus and we're not sure how to proceed. With Windows XP and Dell, we've simply used Symantec's Enterprise Ghost to deploy our images. Playing with the test Intel Macs we have, we are unable to get Ghost to work with the Mac. I've also played with Bombich's NetRestore product (which is FOSS!) but without much success. I'm curious how my fellow readers have resolved this issue. Thanks!"

1 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. From experience: DON'T by tbo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I know from experience that supporting dual-boot is a huge pain. We have a bunch of dual-boot Win XP / Linux machines (with an Xserve running OS X Server providing file and authentication services). Supporting a dual-boot machine is harder than supporting two single-boot machines. Why? Because each machine will typically spend almost all its time in only one OS. This means that automatic software updates, virus def updates , daily/weekly/monthly cron jobs, etc., won't happen on the other OS, and you'll have huge maintenance nightmares.

    Figure out what OS each machine needs to run, and install that one only. Another poster suggested Parallels, which is a great way to handle things if you only occasionally need a non-OS X OS.