Back to the Future: OPSIconf 2026 in Mainz

Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads. Except, of course, if you’re driving to Mainz. Nobody showed up in a DeLorean, but more people than ever before found their way to the fifth OPSIconf on April 14 and 15, 2026. The motto: OPSI, back to the future.

Time Travel Begins

Doc Brown needed a bolt of lightning to power his time machine. I made do with a train ticket and a lukewarm coffee from the train’s snack bar. Many attendees were there for the very first time, blissfully unaware of what they were getting into. The others knew exactly what to expect and came anyway. Or maybe because of it. A quick poll at the start revealed what everyone was hoping for: roadmap, news, networking, community. And somewhere in the middle of the word cloud, in bold letters, the number 42. Some things need no explanation.

Temporal Junction Point

Doc Brown would probably have launched into a lengthy scientific explanation for why Mainz becomes the temporal junction point of the entire space-time continuum every two years—before concluding that it might just be an amazing coincidence after all. I’m going with cosmic significance. The fact that the same people show up here every two years is no accident. That’s gravitational pull. The first day was all about the workshops. “Administration with OPSI-configed & OPSI-WebGUI: Best Practices” followed by “Automating with opsi-cli”—and anyone who had never worked with OPSI before was in good hands at the UIB office across town for the beginner’s workshop.

If you’ve ever felt that editing default properties in opsi-configed could be more intuitive, this was your chance to say so—and talk directly to the people who can do something about it. The first workshop covered what happened in 2025: multi-line editing for host parameters and product properties, Markdown in product descriptions, a new tab structure for depots, products and clients, free client search with invertible selection, remote control and opsiclientd timeline. Plus, a first look at the new OPSI-WebGUI and the long-awaited dashboard with configurable views. Features were promised, wishes noted. That’s the difference between this and a support ticket: here, you’re sitting in the same room as the person who can implement your request in a few weeks.

Next up: command-line magic, right there at the terminal. Two hours of opsi-cli, the OPSI command-line tool that’s been in development since 2021 and runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Data output and processing, working with OPSI packages, client management—three topics, one tool. What used to require several separate tools is now all in one place. On SSO: SAML2 works, Keycloak works, SSH keys unfortunately don’t. And when asked whether storing passwords in opsi-cli is a good idea, the answer was refreshingly straight: “Would I recommend it? Well, I don’t do it myself.”

2,000 Years and a Sparkling Wine

Tuesday evening, the group split in two. One half hopped on the Gutenberg Express for a city tour. The other half—I was in that group—did a Wine Walk around Mainz. And let me tell you, this was nothing like your typical tourist thing. We’re talking back alleys nobody knows about, bottles that just kept appearing, and a guide who talked about 2,000 years of city history like he’d lived through every single bit of it. We found out that Mainz was once defended from a sauna. That Pinot Gris is “the missionary position of wine varieties.” And that a good sparkling wine “dances on your tongue.”

Later, the whole group got together for dinner. Somewhere between dessert and the fourth drink, the line between social event and tech conference just kind of disappeared. “What’s that opsi-cli parameter again, the one that…” One person asked, three people answered at the same time, and suddenly the whole table had an opinion. You can’t plan for that. That’s exactly why you come to OPSIconf.

1.21 Jigowatts for OPSI

Wednesday morning, 9 o’clock sharp, Dr. Jan Werner and Dr. Bardo Wolf, the two Managing Directors of uib GmbH, kicked off the keynote. If you want to sort out the future, you start by looking at the past—and if you’ve kept a piece of software alive since 1994, you’ve got a lot of past to work with. Jan and Bardo started with a look back at an eventful 2025, then turned to what’s coming next.

The big news: OPSI is now available in the cloud. No server, no maintenance, no admin headaches—UIB handles the infrastructure, operations and updates, GDPR-compliant, hosted in Germany, all enterprise extensions included. Marty McFly would have been speechless at the thought of 1.21 jigowatts, but he probably would have asked: “What the hell is a cloud?” The answer: OPSI, professionally hosted—and the server’s already running.

Got Questions? Good.

Rico Barth and Jörg Brückner from KIX Service Software GmbH showed what happens when OPSI and KIX work together: hardware and software inventory always up to date, software rollout with automatic documentation, one single data source for everyone. A single source of truth—and if you’ve ever had to explain why three different lists show three different version numbers, you know exactly what that’s worth.

Nils Otto presented the plan to modernize opsi-script: Python instead of a proprietary scripting language. Not a finished product—this is early days, and the community is being brought in from the start. The reason for the switch is pretty straightforward: opsi-script has its own interpreter that nobody really wants to maintain, limited tooling support, and a codebase that just can’t handle major changes anymore. With Python you get IDE support, AI assistance for writing scripts, local testing, and a syntax most people already know. The audience had questions. “Will user login scripts be rewritten too? Can you add your own libraries?” The answer: “OPSI sets no limits”—at which point someone in the audience muttered: “Yeah, that’s what Microsoft has been promising for years”, and everyone just lost it.

Then the opsi4institutes community had the floor. Since the first mailing list went up on February 22, 2015, o4i has grown to around 230 registered institutions and 450 users, runs its own Git repository, a package repository with over 160 non-public packages, and is organized within the German National Research and Education Network (DFN). All volunteer work, on top of their actual day jobs—and UIB has been supporting them from day one. They didn’t forget to mention it.

Eric Esser showed what happens when Desinfec’t and OPSI team up when things go wrong: as an OPSI netboot package, Desinfec’t can be rolled out via o4i_desinfect to any number of clients automatically, decrypt Bitlocker-encrypted drives, scan them, and write the results straight back through the OPSI service. If you need to know how many clients are affected: this is how you find out. And at the end, a genuine thank-you to the UIB team, who “still answer the support line on a Friday at 5pm”.

Roadmap: 4.3 and Beyond

Time travel can be exhausting—anyone who’s ever been through a major version upgrade knows that. Jan Werner wrapped things up with a look at what’s coming in OPSI 4.3 and OPSI 5. For 4.3, there’s still ARM support coming for Windows, macOS and specific Linux clients, plus new notifiers. For OPSI 5, the list is longer: new semantic versioning, overhauled license management in opsi-configed and WebGUI, reworked WAN/VPN module, Notifier 5, improved reporting with dashboard and CVE monitoring, optimized package format, reworked API, multi-tenancy and role concepts, and better MDM integration.

When asked about the timeline, Jan just smiled and said: “No comment.” But one thing is clear: OPSI 5.0 is the starting line, not the finish line—more features will follow with 5.1, 5.2, and so on. The future hasn’t been written yet. And that goes for roadmaps just as much as it does for time travel. To wrap things up, a quick poll: “What did you like best, what are you taking home, what was missing?” Top of the highlights list: opsi-cli, networking, Python, the social event. Taking home: new contacts, inspiration, Desinfec’t, KIX—and according to the poll, also a cap, a t-shirt and a pen. What was missing? An OPSI hoodie. More sleep. And: 42.

Stay OPSIfied!

Your future is whatever you make it — or in this case, whatever you code it to be. See you in 2028, at the next OPSIconf in Mainz. I’m already looking for a DeLorean.

Impressions OPSIconf 2026