lshw Command in Linux: Get Hardware Details

While running any operating system, a user will find himself in a situation where he wants to know all the hardware details.

And when you're running Linux, there's nothing better than using the lshw (list hardware) command for that purpose.

So in this tutorial, I'm going to share multiple examples of how you can use the lshw command to get hardware info.

How to use the lshw command

To use the lshw command, you'd have to follow the simple command syntax:

lshw [-format] [options]

Here,

• [-format]: is where you specify the output format between HTML, XML, JSON, sort (shows the hardware paths), and bus info (shows bus information).
• [options]: Used to tweak the default behavior of the lshw command.

In case you're curious about the effects when executed without any additional flags or formatting options, here you have it:

sudo lshw

It will give you every hardware detail possible with the lshw command and that's not the best way to use the lshw.

So let's look at how you can use the lshw command to derive specific information only.

1. Show network information

To display the network information, you'd have to use the -C to specify the class and the network as shown:

sudo lshw -C network

As you can see, I have two hardware devices for networking purposes: wifi and ethernet including its logical name and vendor.

2. Get the memory details

Using this method, you will get details of individual RAM slots and the cache, including information like RAM size, clock speed, etc.

And to do so, you'll be using the same -C flag but with the memory option:

sudo lshw -C memory

What the above image suggests is I have 4 RAM slots, each equipped with 8GB of RAM and clocked at 2667MHz.

3. Get the storage information

By far this is the most useful way you can use the lshw command in my opinion as it lists all the connected storage devices with all the necessary information.

And to do so, you can use the lshw command in the following manner:

sudo lshw -class storage

4. Get the system information

The system information includes details like system architecture, motherboard name and manufacturer, and number of plug-and-play ports.

To get the system information, you use the system flag as shown:

sudo lshw -C system

As you can see, I have a Gigabyte motherboard with 7 plug-and-play slots!

5. Get the sound card info

There are times when one wants to verify the manufacturer of the sound card and in that case, you can use the following command:

sudo lshw -C multimedia

6. Get the display controller information

If you want to know which GPU is being used to get the display output, then, you can use the lshw command with the display flag:

sudo lshw -C display

As I'm using the integrated graphics, it is showing the Intel product.

7. Display the PCIE bridge information

If you're looking for a way to get the PCIe bridge information, then, you'd have to use the bridge flag as shown:

sudo lshw -C bridge

8. Display bus information

If you don't know, buses in computers are nothing but a communication system that is used to transfer data inside the system itself.

And if you want to list down the buses in your system, then, you can use the bus flag with the lshw command as shown:

sudo lshw -C bus

As you can see, it listed all the buses including the USB.

9. Display CPU information

To get the details on the processor of your system, you can use the lshw command in this manner:

sudo lshw -C CPU

This will give you details on CPU type, manufacturer, clock speed, number of cores, threads and many more related things.

This is what you've learned so far

Here's the summary of the lshw command with the options used in this tutorial:

option	Description
network	Gets the details of the network hardware devices.
memory	Displays the details of RAM in your system.
storage	Prints details of the storage drives.
system	Gets the details of the motherboard and plug-and-play slots.
multimedia	Details of the sound card of your system.
display	Know more about what is powering the display output.
bridge	Displays info about the PCIe bridges.
bus	It will list down buses and their details.
CPU	List the processor details

Wrapping Up...

This was a tutorial on how to use the lshw command and learn more about the hardware installed on your system.

I hope you find this guide helpful and if you have any queries, feel free to ask in the comments.