A system profiler is a utility that presents information about the hardware attached to a computer. Having access to hard information about your hardware can be indispensable when you need to establish exactly what hardware is installed in your machine. For example, the information will help a technical support individual diagnose problems, or help to evaluate whether a system will support certain software or hardware.

This type of software lets individuals establish hardware details without opening the computer case. This may not be an option if you do not have direct access to the hardware, relying on the internet to connect to the machine. System profilers let you remotely interrogate a system.

In Windows circles, CPU-Z is a popular freeware tool that gathers information on the main devices of a system without having to conduct technical and manual searching. CPU-Z lays out the raw technical data out to read in easy-to-read tables and is well presented. For Linux, there are a number of good utilities that offer the same type of information, providing essential and extended hardware about the entire system. We have chosen the finest console based utilities as well as tools with attractive graphical user interfaces in the style of CPU-Z. Each application featured in this article is released under an open source license.

Now, let’s explore the 6 system profilers at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, a screenshot, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.

System Profilers CPU-G Python based alternative to CPU-Z I-Nex Gambas based alternative to CPU-Z dmidecode Reports information about system hardware according to the SMBDIOS/DMI standard HardInfo System Profiler and Benchmark i7z Reporting tool for i7, i5, i3 CPUs lshw Console and graphical tool extracting detailed information

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