If I understand your question right, you want to find a module that would list all installed software on *NIX platforms, right? If so, I think this is close to impossible, due to the differences. FreeBSD (and other *BSDs) use the ports collection for software installation, while Debian uses apt and RedHat uses rpm. And now I only listed 3 flavors ;)

Besides these methods, it's still quite common on *NIX machines to compile software yourself and install them in any place you see fit.

My best bet for you would be to scan the following directories. That should find *most* software.

• /bin/
• /sbin/
• /usr/bin/
• /usr/sbin/
• /usr/local/bin/
• /usr/local/sbin/

(and/or check out the $PATH enviroment variable)

As for the system resources, what type of information are you exactly looking for?

HTH