How to Get a Graphical Device Manager for Linux Inspecting Hardware Linux has many command-line tools that show you the properties of different hardware components in your computer. What it doesn’t have—by default—is something like the Windows Device Manager. The Windows Device Manager provides a convenient method to browse and inspect the hardware and devices contained within your computer. It’s great because it’s fast and simple. You only need to run one program to capture a lot of information on many hardware devices, and the interface uses a familiar format. There’s a tree on the left with categories of hardware. Browse through the tree, expand and collapse branches, and highlight an item that you want to see the details for. Windows Device Manager will display information about that item in its main window.