The difference between lshw and lspci commands

Question

I think it's a little confused issue but what's the difference the lshw and lspci commands ?

Answer 1

lshw lists all computer hardware and lspci list devices connected to the computer.

From Ubuntu manpage:

lspci is a utility for displaying information about PCI buses in the system and devices connected to them.

lshw is a small tool to extract detailed information on the hardware configuration of the machine. It can report exact memory configuration, firmware version, mainboard configuration, CPU version and speed, cache configuration, bus speed, etc. on DMI-capable x86 or IA-64 systems and on some PowerPC machines (PowerMac G4 is known to work).

Answer 2

To put it very simply:

$ lspci | wc
     17     206    1509
$ sudo lshw | wc
     439    1464   19370   

The lspci command only lists devices that are connected via the PCI bus. The lshw and lshw-gtk (the same thing but with a GUI) on the other hand, provide exhaustive information about all hardware in your system. This will include the motherboard, CPU, hard disks etc. It also provides way more detailed information about these including serial numbers and models.