You're looking at new systems, or installing Linux on a box that used to run a different OS, and you're wondering if all the components -- video, modem, Ethernet, sound -- will work on Linux. The vendors can't, or won't, tell you if their products will work on Linux. You need to know what the chipsets are, to find out if there are Linux drivers.

Linux comes with several good utilities for getting detailed information on what's inside the box. Here are three recipes for getting information from lspci, dmesg, and /proc.

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