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.
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.