lm-sensors

What is lm-sensors?

lm-sensors has been part of the Linux ecosystem since the early 2000s, providing low‑level access to temperature, fan speed, and voltage readings from most modern motherboards. It relies on the kernel’s hwmon interface and a small set of user‑space utilities to query and display the data. The project is mature, actively maintained, and included in the major distributions.

The tool is aimed at sysadmins, overclockers, and power users who need precise hardware monitoring without a graphical interface. It works well in headless or minimal installations where a GUI is not desired.

Compared with Windows utilities like HWiNFO, lm‑sensors feels more utilitarian. It outputs plain text, making it easy to parse in scripts, but it lacks the polished graphs and real‑time dashboards that HWiNFO offers. For those who prefer a GUI, tools like Psensor or Gkrellm can be used on top of lm‑sensors data.

Best for: Users who need reliable, scriptable hardware monitoring on Linux systems.

Key features of lm-sensors

• Accesses kernel hwmon data
• Displays temperatures, fans, voltages
• Supports most motherboards
• Command‑line interface
• Can be scripted
• Configurable via /etc/sensors.d
• Provides raw sensor values
• Supports fan control on some chips

Tips for Windows users

From HWiNFO, you’ll notice lm‑sensors outputs plain text; use the -u flag for raw values or -l for a list of available sensors. There are no file formats to import/export; instead, you can redirect output to a log file or pipe it into a monitoring script. Keyboard shortcuts are not applicable; instead, use command options like -c for continuous mode and -t for a single read. Workflow changes: replace HWiNFO’s GUI dashboard with a terminal window or a lightweight GUI front‑end such as Psensor that reads lm‑sensors data.