Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

When your amazement with Ubuntu 8.04 has subsided, take a moment to look at HardInfo, which is a nice little tool for system profiling.

I found this while looking for some sort of processor benchmarking tool. I want something for the Hardy speed guide that can show differences in system performance while under processor strain. I didn’t find anything like that yet, but I did find HardInfo.

With no heavy dependencies and a very good handle on the guts of your system, this is a slick toy for hardware geeks (like me), or for anyone who needs to see the inner workings of a machine. It’s also useful for understanding how the software is behaving with the hardware, since it shows a lot of core information — like which modules are in use, and where.

It also does some benchmarking, can generate a system report in HTML, and has a remote database it can sync with (I haven’t tried that yet). I don’t know how this managed to stay under my radar for so long, but I’ve already made it a permanent addition to one machine, and once this guide is complete I’ll definitely be adding it to some others.

If you need something to peek at the inside of your box and you don’t want to get your hands dirty on the command line, give it a try.