We rebuild and sell a lot of used Ubuntu GNU/Linux machines. Linux is a great option for us and for our clients because of: a) Licensing, b) Software Freedom, c) Cost, d) Ease of installation / drivers. Over the years a number of volunteers have come in and learned how much simpler Ubuntu GNU/Linux is to install than other proprietary operating systems (even with a fair amount of automation that we do - Unattended installs that grab a lot of the required Windows drivers from one of our servers). One of the things we hadn't done so well is use open source to "spec" systems, but that's all about to change.
Some of our more experienced volunteers have in the past used commands like:
cat /proc/cpuinfo | more
cat/proc/meminfo | more
df -hH
The first command grabs CPU information. The second command displays memory info. The last command displays information about partitions on the hard drive (giving a rough idea of the size of the drive). These are great commands, but much of this information can actually be replaced by one command:
sudo lshw -html > ~/Desktop/myhardware.html
