lshw (Hardware Lister) is a small tool to provide detailed information about all hardware in your system.

To install lshw, type this command:

By default lshw command generates a long lists of information about your hardware and you don't even need some of its information. To generate a compact report use "-short" option.

This will give you summarize information about your hardware devices as shown below:

H/W path               Device       Class       Description
===========================================================
                                    system      PROD00000000
/0                                  bus         8I848P775-G
/0/0                                memory      128KiB BIOS
/0/4                                processor   Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz
/0/4/a                              memory      16KiB L1 cache
/0/4/b                              memory      1MiB L2 cache
/0/4/0.1                            processor   Logical CPU
/0/4/0.2                            processor   Logical CPU
/0/5                                processor   CPU
/0/5/1.1                            processor   Logical CPU
/0/5/1.2                            processor   Logical CPU
/0/1d                               memory      1GiB System Memory
/0/1d/0                             memory      1GiB DIMM 333 MHz (3.0 ns)
/0/1d/1                             memory      DIMM [empty]
/0/1d/2                             memory      DIMM [empty]
/0/100                              bridge      82865G/PE/P DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface
/0/100/1                            bridge      82865G/PE/P PCI to AGP Controller
/0/100/1/0                          display     NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000]
/0/100/1d                           bus         82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1
/0/100/1d/1            /dev/usb2    bus         UHCI Host Controller
/0/100/1d.1                         bus         82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2
/0/100/1d.1/1          /dev/usb3    bus         UHCI Host Controller
/0/100/1d.2                         bus         82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3
/0/100/1d.2/1          /dev/usb4    bus         UHCI Host Controller
/0/100/1d.3                         bus         82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4
/0/100/1d.3/1          /dev/usb5    bus         UHCI Host Controller
/0/100/1d.7                         bus         82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller
/0/100/1d.7/1          /dev/usb1    bus         EHCI Host Controller
/0/100/1e                           bridge      82801 PCI Bridge
/0/100/1e/2                         multimedia  YMF-724F [DS-1 Audio Controller]
/0/100/1e/4            eth1         network     LNE100TX
/0/100/1e/9            eth0         network     88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller
/0/100/1f                           bridge      82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge
/0/100/1f.2            scsi0        storage     82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller
/0/100/1f.2/0.1.0      /dev/cdrom1  disk        DVDRW SHW-160P6S
/0/100/1f.2/0.0.0      /dev/sda     disk        80GB ST380817AS
/0/100/1f.2/0.0.0/1    /dev/sda1    volume      37GiB Windows NTFS volume
/0/100/1f.2/0.0.0/2    /dev/sda2    volume      200MiB EXT3 volume
/0/100/1f.2/0.0.0/3    /dev/sda3    volume      2GiB Linux swap volume
/0/100/1f.2/0.0.0/4    /dev/sda4    volume      35GiB Extended partition
/0/100/1f.2/0.0.0/4/5  /dev/sda5    volume      35GiB Linux filesystem partition
/0/100/1f.3                         bus         82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller
/0/100/1f.5                         multimedia  82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller

To get information about a specific hardware, just type "lshw with the "-class" option followed by the class name. The following classes can be used in "-class" option.

address
bridge
bus
communication
disk
display
generic
input
memory
multimedia
network
power
printer
processor
storage
system
tape
volume

Lets say for example you want to get the information of your video card. Just type the command:

The command will display the detailed information about your video card.

  *-display UNCLAIMED     
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000]
       vendor: nVidia Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: c1
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 66MHz
       capabilities: pm agp agp-3.0 vga_controller bus_master cap_list
       configuration: latency=32 maxlatency=1 mingnt=5
       resources: memory:f8000000-f8ffffff memory:f0000000-f7ffffff(prefetchable) memory:f9000000-f901ffff(prefetchable)

The lshw will also outputs the information you generated into html and xml file using these commands:

You can also use the GUI version of Hardware Lister. Please check the screenshots below.

Information about your motherboard

Information about your cpu

Information about your memory

Information abut your video card

Information about your audio controller

Information about your ethernet controller

Information about your USB controller

Information about your hard drive