Install inxi with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, Nix, pacman, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• inxi

Project history

The inxi project documents its origin as a fork of `infobash` 3.02, the Bash/Gawk system information script by Michiel de Boer, also known as locsmif. Harald Hope's inxi line dates from 2008, and the project credits a long series of contributors and data collectors for helping it learn hardware and distribution edge cases.

A major internal transition happened when inxi moved from the original Bash/Gawk implementation to Perl 5 in the 2.9 generation in early 2018. That rewrite matters historically because inxi's value comes from many small hardware, distro, terminal, IRC, and output-format edge cases, and the Perl codebase became the maintained path for that growing matrix.

The project hosts primary documentation at smxi.org and source code under the smxi organization on Codeberg. The maintained changelog is unusually detailed, reflecting the project's incremental model: repeated small releases for hardware detection, distro support, output formats, sensors, graphics stacks, and regressions found by real users.

Adoption history

inxi spread through distribution packaging and support forums. Its documentation says it was preinstalled in several distributions and packaged in Arch Linux, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Slackware, openSUSE, Red Hat EPEL, and many others, with forum and article references stretching across Linux communities.

Its adoption pattern is unusual for a system tool: it is not only an administrator utility, but also a social support protocol. Forum posts, bug reports, IRC support, and distro help pages commonly ask for `inxi -F`, `inxi -Fxz`, or similar output so volunteers can reason about hardware and drivers without long back-and-forth questioning.

How it is used

Users run inxi to print compact or detailed system summaries, often with flags that expand hardware sections or redact sensitive fields. It is used interactively in terminals, in IRC-style support flows, and in bug reports where normalized machine information is more useful than raw `lspci`, `lsusb`, `/proc`, and distro-release fragments.

Why package nerds care

inxi is significant because it packages operational folklore. It knows about distribution release files, graphics stacks, sensors tools, desktop environments, kernels, and hardware reporting oddities, then turns that mess into stable text, JSON, or XML output. For package people, it is both a diagnostic dependency and a reminder that cross-distro system inspection is mostly edge cases.

The package also illustrates why script-like utilities can become infrastructure: once forums, maintainers, and support teams standardize on a command's output, the package is no longer just a convenience binary. It becomes part of the language users speak when asking for help.

Timeline

• 2005-2007: infobash, the predecessor Bash/Gawk system information script, is authored by Michiel de Boer.
• 2008: Harald Hope's inxi line begins from the infobash fork.
• 2013: The maintained changelog records frequent 1.8 and 1.9 series releases.
• 2018: inxi is rewritten from Bash/Gawk to Perl 5 in the 2.9 generation.
• 2024: smxi.org lists Codeberg as the source-code home for inxi and related smxi tools.
• 2025: The project documentation continues to collect reviews, videos, package references, and support links around inxi usage.

Related projects

• infobash is the direct ancestor.
• smxi, sgfxi, rbxi, svmi, and acxi are related smxi.org tools and repositories.
• Distribution support forums, distro package repositories, and IRC clients are part of the ecosystem in which inxi became useful.

Sources

• https://codeberg.org/smxi/inxi
• https://smxi.org/docs/inxi-about.htm
• https://smxi.org/docs/inxi-changelog.htm
• https://smxi.org/docs/inxi.htm
• https://smxi.org/docs/source-repos.htm