I'm talking about the HAL Device Manager here, accessible from System -> Preferences -> Hardware Information. It didn't have it's entry in the list of gnome-control-center components, so I hope the component where I'm filing it for, "other capplets" is correct.

There used to be free (as in free beer) software for Windows, called AIDA32 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA32 - which could give detailed system information about the hardware (and software) present in a PC. This is now called EVEREST - http://www.lavalys.com/products.php?lang=en - and it is not free beer anymore. It was Windows-only anyway.

I'd love to see a simple clone of AIDA32/EVEREST in GNOME, because there currently is no easy way to figure out what hardware/software is present in a PC when you are running Linux. There are some use cases which would benefit from this:



I want to buy a second-hand PC, and the seller doesn't know what hardware is inside, or you don't trust the seller. You don't want to screw open the PC either, so you use the "improved" HAL Device Manager to check.

You like to overclock your processor, so you want to see easily and quickly what the temperature of your CPU and motherboard is, and the speed of the CPU fan and case fans, so you use the "improved" HAL Device Manager to check.

You are a newbie, somebody asks you what hardware is inside of your PC, and you have no clue because you don't have the bill of your PC purchase lying around or whatever, so you use the "improved" HAL Device Manager to check.

Possibly one of the most important use cases, you don't know your IP address and you need an easy way to know, so you use the "improved" HAL Device Manager to check.



Currently the HAL Device Manager is already a bit capable to fullfill this function, but I still see many problems. Currently the HAL Device Manager has a huge tree view which requires a lot of scrolling. Most of the entries on the tree view are quite cryptic, and in general it looks like a mess. Also, most of the entries offer little useful information. For example, I see that the HAL Device Manager sees my processor, an AMD Athlon 64 3500+. However, when I click the entry, I get useless information like "Unknown", "Status: Status" and "capabilities: processor". I still don't know what the clock speed, multiplier, fan speed, bits (3264 bits), temperature or the revision/stepping is of my CPU.

I propose the following layout for the tree view, a bit similar to AIDA32/EVEREST but even slightly more simple:

Processor
Motherboard
Video (soundcard/onboard video)
Monitor
Sound (videocard/onboard sound)
Internal Memory (RAM)
Disc Drives
Storage
Network
Input Devices
Other Hardware (printers and scanner and such)
Software (things like the kernel version, distribution version)

I don't know how much is possible with hardware detection on Linux, but basic things like giving the CPU, motherboard and RAM info, displaying the kernel version and the IP address should be easily possible, no?

I really hope someone starts to work on this idea, because currently the HAL Device Manager is near unusable/useless for the use cases I presented.

Other information: