Fetching Linux system details with screenfetch and neofetch

Two very useful tools for extracting essential details on your Linux system OS and hardware are screenfetch and geofetch.

Each of these tools is actually a lengthy bash script that fetches the information from your system for you and presents it in an attractive manner with the distribution logo on the left and details on the right–essentially “screen shots” of your system. Neither is likely to be installed on your system by default, but each can be installed with a single command.

screenfetch

You can install screenfetch with sudo apt install screenfetch or sudo yum install screenfetch. Screenfetch is a script with nearly 6,500 lines. It will automatically detect your distribution and display the distribution, kernel, uptime, number of packages installed, shell you’re using, overall and available disk space, CPU, GPU and memory (in use and available). It also displays an ASCII art rendition of the logo related to whatever distribution it’s run on, but you can turn this off if you want to see just the list of details.

The output from this command will look something like this (on Ubuntu), but in color:

$ screenfetch
                          ./+o+-       shs@dragonfly
                  yyyyy- -yyyyyy+      OS: Ubuntu 20.04 focal
               ://+//////-yyyyyyo      Kernel: x86_64 Linux 5.4.0-52-generic
           .++ .:/++++++/-.+sss/`      Uptime: 25d 23h 44m
         .:++o:  /++++++++/:--:/-      Packages: 2882
        o:+o+:++.`..```.-/oo+++++/     Shell: bash 5.0.17
       .:+o:+o/.          `+sssoo+/    Disk: 62G / 541G (12%)
  .++/+:+oo+o:`             /sssooo.   CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E8400 @ 2x 2.997GHz
 /+++//+:`oo+o               /::--:.   GPU: AMD/ATI Caicos [Radeon HD 6450/7450/8450
 +/+o+++`o++o               ++////.   RAM: 915MiB / 5944MiB
  .++.o+++oo+:`             /dddhhh.
       .+.o+oo:.          `oddhhhh+
        +.++o+o``-````.:ohdhhhhh+
         `:o+++ `ohhhhhhhhyo++os:
           .o:`.syhhhhhhh/.oo++o`
               /osyyyyyyo++ooo+++/
                   ````` +oo+++o:
                          `oo++.

To omit the ASCII art logo and see just the system details, add a -n option.

$ screenfetch -n
 shs@dragonfly
 OS: Ubuntu 20.04 focal
 Kernel: x86_64 Linux 5.4.0-52-generic
 Uptime: 25d 23h 50m
 Packages: 2882
 Shell: bash 5.0.17
 Disk: 62G / 541G (12%)
 CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E8400 @ 2x 2.997GHz
 GPU: AMD/ATI Caicos [Radeon HD 6450/7450/8450 / R5 230 OEM]
 RAM: 903MiB / 5944MiB

Adding a -v (verbose) option will coax the script into displaying the system information as it uncovers it. After all the “finding” messages, it will display the usual output.