hardinfo2
System Information and Benchmark for Linux
- Initially created in 2003 by lpereira.
Many has helped testing and develop code, made art/graphics and written
translations for hardinfo2 open source project GPL2+
Developers, Translators, Graphical Designers, etc. are Welcome
- There is so much fun we can do. Program is written in C. has lot of kernel access,
multi tasking and the webserver is a LAMP (Linux Apache2 MariaDB PHP) with
java script frontend where we will add a web app for phone/tablet/PC.
Lots of fun technologies to add on to. Interested?
- Please join Github Discussion. Get Source from GitHub or Download Prebuilds.
Hardinfo2
Latest GitHub Release News:Other news:
New webpage for hardinfo2 - Linux Benchmarking
Work in Progress:
We are working on releasing the hardinfo2 program in all distros.
| Status for Distro branches | ||
| Distro Branch | In Distro | Build from Source |
| Fedora | 38 -> | 23 -> |
| Centos / Redhat | 7 -> | (6) 7 -> |
| Alma / Rocky / Oracle | 7 -> | (6) 7 -> |
| SUSE / OpenSUSE | 15.5-> + TW | YES |
| Debian++ | 13 Unstable-> WIP | (7) 8 -> |
| Ubuntu / Mint / PopOS++ | WIP | 16 -> |
| ArchLinux AUR / Garuda / Manjaro AUR | YES | YES |
| Mageia | Cauldron | YES |
| OpenMandriva | 5.0 -> + Roll + Cook | YES |
| Arch: i686, amd64, ppc64, s390x, armhf / aarch64 / armv6/7/8, mips64, riscv64, +++ | ||
Higher is better.
hardinfo2 User Guide
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is hardinfo2 just a GUI interface for information that can be read from kernel?
- No, it is correct that many informations can be found from kernel, but hardinfo2 does not just collect all these into a nice interface (GUI+CLI) but also adds extra information from blobs and internal tables and routines.
- How do I run all benchmarks?
- Just press the Synchronize button - It will update all information and benchmarks
Command Line Interface
The hardinfo2 program also has a Command Line Interface, for use in terminals. This can be useful for remote support issues, describing and benchmarking a lot of machines remotely, adding a note to the uploaded benchmarks for identifying a group of benchmarks, etc.man hardinfo2 shows the following CLI options:
| -h, --help | Show help options |
| -q, --quite | do not print status messages to standard output |
| -r, --generate-report | creates a report and prints to standard output |
| -f, --report-format | chooses a report format (text, html) |
| -t, --topic | search for a topic in CLI report (-t getlist shows available) (*cpu search for cpu in all report) (2.2.12+) |
| -c, --topic-cache | search for a topic in Cached CLI report (-t getlist shows available) (*cpu search for cpu in all report) (2.2.12+) |
| -b, --run-benchmark | run a specific benchmark eg. -b 'FPU FFT' (Default all benchmarks runs when generate report) |
| -u, user-note | Group-MachineName[-ServerReq] - adds a user note to data send to server. When added eg. -u 1 synchronization is activated. Letters (small+caps) and numbers and dashes are accepted. Length max 50. 0-2 dashes used as seperator. Format Group-MachineName-ServerReq Group and MachineName are for anonymous identification and can put benchmarks into a group and you can sort of identify each machine by your chosen string. ServerReq is to tell the server which records you want to get. See https://hardinfo2.org/userguide#usernote for more details about the Server Request strings available. (2.2.12+) |
| -g, --result-format | chooses a result format (short, conf, shell) |
| -n, --max-results | maximum number of benchmark results to include (-1 for no limit, default is 50) |
| -v, --version | shows program version and quit |
| -s, --skip-benchmarks | Disables all benchmark runs. |
| -w, --very-verbose | show all details |
Example of remote support issues: hardinfo2 -t bios (2.2.12+)
List of topics available: hardinfo2 -t getlist (2.2.12+)
User Note (2.2.12+)
Can be used to put the benchmarks into a group with some sort of identification.
Furthermore, user note allows to decide the benchmark compare list.
The default is Group-MachineName-ServerReq or blank - both results in a random selection of benchmarks returned and no group nor identification is added.
Group is to put a collection of benchmarks into a box, that can then be used to compare against.
Eg. your 2 PC's and 2 Notebooks or you are part of a community that wants to compare their machines. If you want to compare different distros you have on your PC, create a group and voila. Or you want to compare a large number of PC's via batchscripts.
MachineName is an id for you to identify, what the benchmark is.
ServerRequest is the parameter to tell the server which benchmarks you want to see.
Valid inputs are letters(small+caps) and numbers. Total max length is 50.
Current supported Server Requests:
mychosengrp-mychosenid - returns random benchmarks (default)
mychosengrp-mychosenid-GRP - returns benchmarks for mychosengrp
mychosengrp-mychosenid-MYCPU - returns benchmarks for same model as my cpu
mychosengrp-mychosenid-NONE - returns no benchmarks (Special case)
mychosengrp-mychosenid-SBC - returns Single Board Computer benchmarks
mychosengrp-mychosenid-DESKTOP - returns Desktop Computer benchmarks
mychosengrp-mychosenid-SERVER - returns Server Computer benchmarks
mychosengrp-mychosenid-NOTEBOOK - returns Notebook Computer benchmarks
Website tricks
You can call benchmarks directly:https://hardinfo2.org/?cpu1=7950x
https://hardinfo2.org/?cpu1=rpi4&cpu2=rpi5&cpu3=5600
You can select filter group directly:
https://hardinfo2.org/?u=SBC
groups:
ALL,SBC,NOTEBOOK,DESKTOP,GPU,STORAGE
WORKSERVER,32,INTEL,AMD,OTHER
You can filter for your own custom group of benchmarks:
See above user note or CLI option -u
https://hardinfo2.org/?u=mychosengroup
You can call a page directly:
https://hardinfo2.org/news
https://hardinfo2.org/benchcompare
https://hardinfo2.org/userguide
https://hardinfo2.org/credits
https://hardinfo2.org/history
https://hardinfo2.org/download
https://hardinfo2.org/dbstats
Hardinfo2 History Page
This program is from the time when Linux was young and has evolved along side the Kernel and Distros.
It was included in Fedora 1 and Debian 3 in 2003, which was around the time, that Linux started to be widely known outside the academic/hackers world.
History of Linux OS
1970 - Kenneth Lane Thompson - Unix & B
1970 - Dennish Ritchie - C
1979 - Bjarne Stroustrup - C++
1983 - Richard Matthew Stallman - FOSS, GNU: GCC, GPL Licenses
1991 - Linus Torvalds - Linux Kernel
1993 - Patrick Volkerding - Slackware - first main stream source Linux
1993 - Ian Murdock - Debian - first main stream Linux
1995 - Marc Ewing/Bob Young - Red Hat Software - first commercial FOSS
1998 - World Wide Web adoption (ADSL Speeds)
2000 - Microsoft declares war on Linux and FOSS
2003 - This is were hardinfo2 starts
2003 - Patrick Mochel, Mike Murphy - SysFS
2005 - Linus Torvalds - git
2008 - Jesse Barnes - Direct Rendering Manager (DRM)
2008 - Thomas Dohmke, Chris Wanstrath, P.J. Hyett, Scott Chacon - GitHub
2008 - Kristian Høgsberg - Wayland
2010 - Lennart Poettering - SystemD
2012 - Even Microsoft embraces FOSS
2018 - Microsoft buys GitHub
2023 - Linux Operating Systems on par with proprietary ones
2024 - Nvidia embraces FOSS (Last mayor HW vendor)
Version 0.3.3 2003
First distributed version
It was released in 2003 made by lpereira, who needed the program for personal daily problems - much like every FOSS program starts - a need for personal usage.
Version 0.3.6 2005
Latest of the original layout from 2005
High quality look and feel for programs of that time period, but relatively little information could be provided.
Version 0.4.0 2008
The new layout for more information from 2008
Now lpereira had gotten some positive attention and was keen on changing the program to be more than just personal needs.
So much improvement from version 0.3 to 0.4 - lots of information nicely formatted.
So remember that if you want programs to evolve - give the FOSS projects some love! - We develop together
Version 0.5 2009
This is the most famous version from 2009.
Linus Tech Tips said he loved this program with his polite comment: "It's better than nothing!" - LTT-Youtube
Magazines around the world noticed the GUI program and wrote nice articles about it. Some users made videos showing how to use the program and showed it off to others, so much love, thanx.
Google Scholar lists academic articles, that uses hardinfo. Also, Tom's Hardware uses hardinfo2 Tom's HW
2011
The webserver was lost in 2011 as a german Open Source Software initiative shutdown and there was no backup. lpereira moved to the new project lwan, leaving the project without a maintainer.
Version 0.5git/0.6a 2017-2020
Up2dating effort, so nice!
New release effort by bp0 + (lpereira) made a huge task with help from ocerman and others
Development stopped in 2020.
Never Released but was in some distros.
Version 2.1.11 2024
Released 2024-05 - Dark motherboard theme
New community edition
hwspeedy repay to Linux community for 25 years of fun with Linux, thanx!
News:
Lots of Maintenance/testing/doc/bugfixing and updating for current distros
Keeping it working for ~10 years of old distros and tools
New Benchmarks that works from slow to fast machines
Added themes and dark/light mode
Remade the lost website (This website)
CLI improved for command line usage
Lots of UI/UX improvements -> Refreshed
Want to be part of the future of hardinfo2 - please join the hardinfo2 community at github, thanx.
Download Hardinfo2
First check if your distro already has hardinfo2 - if it is older than below - please upgrade.
Link to hardinfo2 download page: https://hardinfo2.org/download
CPU Architecture: amd64/x86_64=Normal PC, aarch64=ArmV8, riscv64, armv7l, i686, etc..
This is the same version as distro release with minor stepped (only build by distros)
Copyright hardinfo2 project, Written by hwspeedy, 2024-2025