Last Updated on May 17, 2025
Let’s start with detailed reviews of 40 Essential System Tools. This is a series of cornerstone articles highlighting essential system tools. These are small, indispensable utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users of Linux based systems.
We’ve also compiled the best tools, scripts, and ways to interrogate your PC.
| System Administration Software | |
|---|---|
| System administration plays an essential role in the maintenance and operation of computer systems and networks. | |
 | Configuration Management - Configuration Management software enables administrators to automatically manage the entire configuration of one or multiple computers. |
 | Configuration Management Databases - A configuration management database (CMDB) is a repository of information related to the various components of an information system detailing an organisation’s IT services and the relationships between those components. |
 | Customer Service Trouble Ticketing Software - A customer service trouble ticketing (or help desk) is an information and assistance resource that helps the resolution of computer related problems. |
 | Data Recovery - Data recovery is the process of retrieving data from corrupted or damaged storage media when it cannot be accessed. The storage media in question will often be a hard disk. |
 | Disk Cloning - Create, destroy, resize, move, check and copy partitions. It has a wide range of other uses such as provisioning new computers in the workplace, restoring computers from a master image, and system recovery. |
 | Disk Encryption - Easy-to-use data encryption and security. The importance of security should never be underestimated. The consequences of losing data can be disastrous for any organization. |
| File Systems (Encrypted FUSE-Based) - Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) lets non-privileged users create their own file systems without editing kernel code. |
 | File Systems (Journaling) - A journaling file system is a special type of file system that maintains a tracking file, called a journal. The journal enables the system to repair any inconsistencies that may arise as a result of a system halted abnormally. |
 | Hard Disk Utilities for System Tweakers - We examine the finest open source tools to diagnose the health of a hard disk. We also look at software that can help improve the performance of a hard disk. |
 | Incident Response - These tools enable you to respond to critical issues before they impact your business. A good incident response tool integrates with many different IT Service Management tools. |
 | Log Analyzers - The best open source software for collecting, parsing, storing, and making sense of logs. |
 | Log File Analyzers (Console) - We can use the tail utility to monitor a plain text log file. These tools give a lot more information than tail. |
 | Log File Viewers - Applications capture an enormous amount of information to log files, especially as a server may generate multiple logs. This software lets you view the logs. |
 | Mailing List Managers - An electronic mailing list offers the ability to efficiently distribute information to many internet users. It is similar in some ways to a traditional mailing list. |
 | Network Configuration Management - A process that every device on the network is subjected to throughout its life cycle. |
 | NVIDIA GPU Monitoring Tools - We spotlight popular alternatives to the nvidia-smi utility. |
 | Partitioning Tools - Disk partitioning is the means of dividing a hard disk drive into multiple logical storage units referred to as partitions. A partition is a contiguous set of blocks on a drive that are treated as an independent disk. |
 | Power Management Tools - These software solutions offer things like processor frequency scaling, advanced power management including GPU power management, Wi-Fi power saving, and much more. |
 | Server Provisioning Tools - Server provisioning is a set of actions to prepare a server, taking it from bare metal to a functioning system complete with an operating system, data and software. |
 | Status Page Systems - A status page system is software that lets you communicate incidents, schedule maintenance and downtimes with your customers. |
 | System Monitoring Tools - This software helps identify problems before they escalate to emergency status. They are not only useful for network administrators. |
| System Profilers - A system profiler is a utility that presents information about the hardware attached to a computer. Having access to hard information about your hardware can be indispensable when you need to establish exactly what hardware is installed in your machine. |
 | Web Application Firewalls - A web application firewall (WAF) is a type of application firewall that lets you see and analyze HTTP traffic to and from a web application. |
| Backup Software | |
|---|---|
| Backup software is used to perform a complete back up of a file, data, database, system or server. It enables users to make a duplicate of everything contained on the original source. This type of software is also used to perform a recovery of the data or system in the event of a disaster. | |
 | Backup Tools - Explore backup software with intuitive graphical interfaces, applications that backup systems with snapshots, whilst not forgetting the powerful command-line tools that exist. |
 | Backup Tools (Simple) - Keep data safe with the minimum of fuss. Install software that hides the complexity of doing backups. |
 | BorgBackup Front-Ends - Explore front-ends to Borg which simplify making backups. We include both GUI and CLI software. |
 | DeDuplicating Encryption Tools - Deduplicating encrypting backup software. data deduplication is a specialized data compression technique for eliminating duplicate copies of repeating data. This technique therefore improves storage utilization. |
| Restic Front-Ends - Explore front-ends to Restic which simplify making backups. We include Web UI, GUI and TUI software. |
| Restic Wrappers - Explore wrappers for Restic. These wrappers make Restic easier to use. |