9 of the Best Free Linux System Monitoring Tools

Computer monitoring systems are used to gather data for the purpose of real-time incident notification, performance analysis, and system health verification. Without such a tool, a system administrator would have to login to each machine to collect information on a regular basis. This kind of repetitive task can be automated using a system monitoring tool.

System monitoring can also help identify problems before they escalate to emergency status. This type of software is not only useful for network administrators. Home users with a small network or even just a single computer will benefit from advanced notification provided by system monitoring tools. Knowing that free space on the hard disk is running out, or that a particular server/daemon has gone down can be extremely useful.

These types of systems gather data relating to CPU, memory, network, disk utilization, response time of network services, and much more.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 9 Linux system monitoring tools. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants to monitor a specific service or situation.

Now, let's explore the 9 system monitoring applications at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, screenshots, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.

System Monitoring Tools
Nagios	Host and service monitor designed to inform you of network problems
OpenNMS	Enterprise grade network monitoring platform
ZABBIX	All-in-one 24x7 free monitoring solution
Xymon	System for monitoring of hosts and networks, inspired by the Big Brother software
Mon	General-purpose problem alerting system
Pandora FMS	Flexible monitoring system
Opsview	Network and application monitoring tool that extends the capabilities of Nagios
FreeNATS	Automatic network status testing, alerting and reporting package
Monit	Utility for managing and monitoring processes, files, directories and filesystems

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