HardDrake is a service for hardware detection, run at system boot time, and also a full GUI-based tool which ties together many of the tools already included in a GNU/Linux distribution. It automates and simplifies the process of installing new hardware. For the most part, HardDrake is able to detect most devices.

On one hand, HardDrake is used to display information, and on the other, it can launch configuration tools. With its easy-to-use interface, you can browse all the hardware your system contains.

HardDrake uses the “ldetect” engine, so if your new hardware is not detected, you may try to upgrade the ldetect library itself and its hardware database, located in the ldetect-lst package.

To launch HardDrake, you can start it through:

After all devices have been detected, the main HardDrake window appears (see Figure 3.1, “Selected Device”).

On the left is the device tree that shows all the hardware categories.

By selecting a device, you see additional information about it in the right frame. To better understand the meaning of the information presented, you can consult the help page accessible by choosing Help → Fields description from the menu.

Depending on the device selected, other buttons may appear:

Unknown hardware. A special category called Unknown/Others might also show up, containing all the unknown hardware in your system, as well as known hardware which does not fit into any existing categories (such as thermal sensors, random number generators, etc.).

Auto-detection of special devices. You can also toggle the entries in the Options menu to enable automatic detection of some hardware which wouldn't have been detected otherwise. You need to restart HardDrake for this change to take effect.