hi out there. started playing with ubuntu recently and would like to know how to access the hardware list in gnome.

Welcome to LQ.

If you're looking for drivers, there's an option in the System->Administration menu simply called "Hardware Drivers" that will attempt to detect and find drivers for any devices that need ones that aren't already present.

There is a more general GUI utility called HardInfo that should do what you want. It should be available in the Ubuntu Software Center (just search for "hardinfo").

If you're comfortable with, or at least not afraid of the command line, lspci and lshw (the latter of which is also available in the Ubuntu software repositories) are also good tools for hardware probing.

If you would like a complete listing of your hardware You can open a terminal and type lspci
This will list your machine hardware. if you want to save it to a file you can type this at the command line
lspci > info.text
That will put the list into a file in the current working directory. I recommend you put it in your home directory which would be
/home/your user name goes here
so to put it there you would type
lspci > /home/username hardwareinfo.txt

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Ubuntu and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Have a look at http://embraceubuntu.com/2007/02/18/...your-computer/

lspci is nearly correct. Try lshw instead.

Hardinfo is good, lshw is good as well. You'll get different information from those tools.

BTW, if you dont want to use lshw from the console there is lshw-gtk. Same info, but in a GUI.