OCS Inventory

OCS Inventory does discovery, not management. Agents sit on your machines, report hardware and installed software back to a central server, and the web console shows what is actually out there. It pairs with GLPI so often that plenty of teams run both without realising they are separate projects.

GPL and free with no paid tier. The server is PHP and Perl on a MySQL backend, and agents cover Windows, Linux, macOS and Android. Setup is dated but well documented, and the network discovery feature will find devices nobody told you about.

Reach for it when you need to answer "what software is installed across 400 machines" and you no longer trust the spreadsheet. Solo: skip it. Small teams: only worth it if you already run GLPI. Large teams with a real endpoint estate: automatic discovery pays for itself quickly.

The catch is the pace and the interface. This project dates to 2001 and looks it. Development continues but slowly, and Fleet covers similar ground with far less friction if you can run osquery instead.