tell me a portable way to do it and you have it.

according to http://mj.ucw.cz/pciutils.shtml lspci seems pretty portable.

For graphics card something like this migth do:
lspci | grep 'VGA compatible controller'

And then some string-magic to make that prettier. I don't really know to do that part but if lspci is acceptable I might look into it and make a patch.

I'll have a look at libpci.

*** Bug 399073 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

From duplicate 399073:" Using dmidecode, I can get this information:

        Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
        Product Name: M6Ne
        Serial Number: <serial-number>
        UUID: <some UUID>

It'd be great to have this in the hardware category of the system tab. "

As we are removing the System tab from System Monitor in favour of Control Center -> Details Pane ->Overview section (see bug #649908) I am moving this to the gnome control center module and updating the description accordingly.

I'm fine moving *some* things to the details panel, but having a complete hardware list isn't part of the design. I'd be fine having the extra data available as a "more" tab, but I don't think most of this makes a lot of sense when the data is already so readily available from the command-line.

The "More" button could just be launching gnome-system-monitor...

(In reply to comment #8)
> The "More" button could just be launching gnome-system-monitor...

The system tab has been removed from system monitor master (see bug #649908), as the same information was available in Control Center, so launching system monitor will not help, System Monitor will be "monitoring" the system, displaying dynamic data, while the System information is static data (not changing often).

@Bastien: I think a complete hardware list is out of the question, so *some* things should be enough, even the reporter states that he's not quite sure that this (System monitor system panel/Control center details panel) is the right place to display it.

I agree that in the overview section the space is limited and a longer hardware list would clutter it, and as it should be an overview, there's no reason putting the information there.

However in the sidebar there's lots of empty space, and I already have a Graphics panel (with two lines of content: Driver: VESA: SUMO and Experience Standard). What is that panel used for usually (when it displays more information than on my computer?) Could'nt we make that a more generic Hardware item (in the sidebar instead of Graphics - just to have the same number of items in the sidebar to avoid cluttering it) or if not, couldn't we add a Hardware item, as I think the best place (if we need) to display hardware information (only the ones the user might be interested in and we can find, as users usually are not interested in USB hubs and stuff like that) would be the Details panel in Control Center. And as there have been more user reports requesting hardware information it might be worth considering.

What do you think?

(In reply to comment #9)
> What do you think?

That design is required for that one.

As I said though, I'm not interested in having a "hardware inspector" in the system settings. Showing DMI information is amongst the sort of thing I'm not interested in seeing. You'll need to make a case for each new information you want to display before we can figure out where to put things.

If the goal is to make it easier to report hardware bugs, or sort through hardware driver problems, having something generate all that information a-la SMOLT (though defunct) and a single button uploading relevant information for debugging purposes might be better than whatever amount of data we end up putting in this dialogue which will be hard to cut'n'paste. We'd end up with screenshots in bugzilla, and those can't get text indexed.

*** Bug 582311 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

We show the graphics card series already, and we have a bug about adding the computer manufacturer and model (that's bug 694683). We're also proposing a "More Information" dialog for, well, showing more information.

I'm reluctant to list the motherboard, since this is a technical thing that the vast majority of people won't be familiar with. It also has relatively little value when debugging (correct me if I'm wrong).

The specific graphics chip can be the source of issues with GNOME 3 though, so it might be useful to include that somewhere, preferably as an extension of the existing graphics entry.

Is there any other information we should consider including?

(In reply to comment #12)
> We show the graphics card series already, and we have a bug about adding the
> computer manufacturer and model (that's bug 694683). We're also proposing a
> "More Information" dialog for, well, showing more information.
> 
> I'm reluctant to list the motherboard, since this is a technical thing that the
> vast majority of people won't be familiar with. It also has relatively little
> value when debugging (correct me if I'm wrong).
Actually I only have mentioned the motherboard, as some people do not have brand-name computers, and 'cat /sys/class/dmi/id/{sys_vendor,product_name,product_version}' doesn't really contain relevant information. 
In any case, I have tested this on my non-brandname (assembled from parts bought separately) work computer, and the result is exactly the motherboard information:

Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
GA-A75M-UD2H

So in this context I agree that adding motherboard info is not relevant, as for brand-name computers you can find that from the model, and for non-brandname, at least for me, I will see that information at the vendor and product_name field, so that should be OK.

Thanks for the extra information, Robert. Let's follow up in bug 694683.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 694683 ***