How to check Linux computer configuration

There are many commands available to check Linux computer configuration information and configuration. Some commands only display hardware information such as CPU or memory, other commands display full detailed information.

How to check Linux computer configuration

Refer to TipsMake's article below to learn some basic commands to check Linux computer configuration.

Check Linux computer configuration

Here are some basic commands to check Linux computer configuration:

1. lscpu command

The lscpu command provides information about the CPU and processing units. This command does not have any other options or functions.

2. lscpu

When running the above command, the output looks like below:

3. lspci command

Lspci is another command line tool, this command lists all the PCI buses and detailed information about the devices connected to them such as VGA adapter, graphics card, network card, USB ports, SATA controller, . .

4. lspci

When running the above command, the output looks like below:

Additionally, we can also filter specific device information by running the command below:

5. lspci -v | grep "VGA" -A 12

The screen will display the graphics card information as below:

6. lshw command

Lshw is used to report detailed and concise information about hardware units such as CPU, memory, USB controllers, drives, etc. Lshw extracts information from various "/proc" files.

7. lshw -short

When running the above command, the output will display the information as shown below:

8. lsscsi command

To list all scsi/sata devices like hard drives and optical drives, we use the command below:

9. lsscsi

The output looks like below:

10. lsusb command

This command displays USB controllers and details about the devices connected to them. By default, the lsusb command will print brief information. If we want, we can use the -v option to print detailed information for each USB port.

11. lsusb

The output results look like this:

12. Inxi order

The Inxi command is a bash script that retrieves hardware information from many sources and commands on the system, then returns to the user a report including information and configuration of the Linux computer.

By default, inxi is not installed on Ubuntu. To install inxi, we use the command below:

13. sudo apt-get install inxi

After installing inxi, to get hardware information we run the command below:

14. inxi -Fx

The output results look like this:

15. df command

This command provides brief information about the different partitions, mount points, used and available free space on each partition.

We can run the df command with the -H parameter:

16. df -H

The output has the form:

17. Free Order

To check the amount of used RAM, the amount of free RAM, and the total amount of RAM on a Linux computer, we use the Free command:

18. free -m

The output results look like this:

19. Dmidecode command

Different from other commands, the dmidecode command extracts hardware information by reading data from DMI tables.

To display information about the processor, we run the command:

20. sudo dmidecode -t processor

To display memory information, we run the command:

21. sudo dmidecode -t memory

To display information about BIOS, we run the command:

22. sudo dmidecode -t bios

23. Hdparm command

The hdparm command provides information about sata devices such as hard drives.

24. sudo hdparm

When running the above command, the output looks like below:

The above article TipsMake has just introduced you to some basic commands to check Linux computer configuration, different from how to check Mac and Windows configuration . Each command will display different hardware and configuration information. If you want, you can use multiple commands to search for specific hardware details. All the above command line tools are available in most Linux distributions and can be easily installed from the default repositories.

Marvin Fry

Update 16 June 2024