Why is the sensor support so poor compared to Windows (HWiNFO) and how do we change it?

Currently reading information about temperature, voltage, power draw, fan speed ect on Linux can be quite spotty and almost always less detailed than on HWiNFO on Windows such as with power draw (as far as I can tell there is no easy way to view the wattage consumption of different components in the system).

My understanding is that sensor data is generally exposed through /sys/ files by kernel drivers which communicate with the hardware directly under the hood. Running lm\_sensors on my laptop mentions that "thermal management is \[often\] handled by ACPI rather than the OS" so this also indicates to me that some sensors are interfaced through ACPI. I'm not sure if there are any other sources of sensor data is may or may not be used.

There are two parts to reaching parity with software like HWiNFO on Linux:

# Sensor Data Parity

The first is of course to be able to get access to all of the same sensors. Throwing around some ideas, keep in mind I know very little about what I am talking about so please correct me or provide more context:

* If a kernel driver itself has the information but isn't exposing it then we can patch the driver to expose /sys/ files to userspace. This was briefly mentioned here: [https://community.frame.work/t/responded-sensors-availability-linux-vs-windows/47416/8](https://community.frame.work/t/responded-sensors-availability-linux-vs-windows/47416/8). My initial thought would be that there would be a bunch of info for components that are commonly used in enterprise (such as certain CPUs). I suspect this approach is probably more viable for components such as CPUs or GPUs.
* In a lot of cases there may just not be any vendor support or documentation, I suspect this is the problem for a lot of things like fans. In this case we may have to make use of the work HWiNFO has done on Windows. This could be done by reverse engineering how HWiNFO works (either by snooping communication with hardware or looking at decompiled software) but I suspect this would be a tedious and manual process that is just fighting an endless uphill battle, far from a solution that could "just work" like HWiNFO does. I imagine software such as WINE is out of the question since HWiNFO likely calls Windows only drivers that do not exist on Linux or ACPI calls that probably are impossible to get working for some reason.
* Request hardware companies to better support Linux. I think this is unlikely for most cases where there isn't already an expansive effort to support linux by these companies.
* Some kind of communication bus fuzzy search (such as by using i2cdetect). I think lm-sensors does this to an extent but I don't think it does much in most cases and can potentially cause issues.
* In some cases a kernel driver does exist but is obscure and not enabled by default or lacks support by frontend software. I experienced this with my laptop 7535U of which I can use the zenergy (amd\_energy fork since I couldn't figure out how to easily install amd\_energy) driver to view per core energy usage. I had to install this driver myself and no frontend software that I used seemed to support it.

# A comprehensive frontend

While there are a couple frontends for different sensors there is none nearly as comprehensive as HWiNFO on Linux. This is in part due to the aforementioned lack of sensor data but possibly also because the software that I've seen is often targeted at specific types of sensors rather than as a centralized hub for nearly all of them (also see point about zenergy above). Getting the above done seems to be the biggest bottleneck but I'd be willing to write a GUI (with CLI fallback) myself if it comes to it (probably in the iced toolkit).



# What can we do as a community to improve the situation?

Is what I said earlier correct?

If so how could I or anybody else get started with say reverse engineering a sensor or creating a patch for a kernel driver. What resources are available to get started?

DISCLAIMER: No, this is not

LLM written. I handwrote it in VIM in like 40 minutes then spellchecked it. I also made a post in the Arch Linux subreddit with a different noscript which I changed in this post because I think it made people think that my post was LLM written.

https://redd.it/1pkgukl
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Gogs (self-hosted Git service written in Go) Zero-Day RCE (CVE-2025-8110) Actively Exploited
https://www.wiz.io/blog/wiz-research-gogs-cve-2025-8110-rce-exploit

https://redd.it/1pkn2ms
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"Compact" Linux book from 2002
https://redd.it/1pkn9ro
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Using “AI” to manage your Fedora system seems like a really bad idea
https://www.osnews.com/story/144006/using-ai-to-manage-your-fedora-system-seems-like-a-really-bad-idea/

https://redd.it/1pksfj8
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Hey, Windows user who desires to switch to Linux Mint. Does Libre Office work in Linux?

I'm a writer and Libre Office is my go-to program for writing documents, I've long known about the failures and outright abuses of Windows for a while, now, and I've been wondering if my writing program actually works on a Linux operating system.

https://redd.it/1pkwkjc
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Unlock a memory: your first public Pull Request

Hey, this 2025 is going away and my mind is watching back for a while about all my path in IT & Security, all my contributions on open source projects, all software I used on my distros... And, one question arose in my mind, that I would share with you.

What has been your first merged Pull Request of your life on an open source project? Is that project still alive somewhere (i.e., GitHub)?

https://redd.it/1pkxqun
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are there icon packs that don't touch third party app icons like Adwaita for example?

all icon packs i can find theme app icons hard (i love papirus for example but it themes third party app icons), i want an icon pack that only themes system things and stuff like folders, default file manager etc

https://redd.it/1pl17w4
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Thinking of coming back to Linux.

Windows 11 using webview for everything and being so sluggish even on a high-end system is annoying. Dwm is hot trash, scheduling sucks balls etc etc.

How is Linux looking into 2025? I used to run arch, but it just became such a hassle to do simple things that just work on windows that I ditched it. Does everything mostly work out of the box now?

I dont care about gaming, most new pc games are unoptimized trash and I have zero intentions at being angry playing some dogshit pvp games anymore other than Minecraft which runs better on linux anyways.


Using a 14900k, z690 unify x and 5070ti.

https://redd.it/1pl5u1e
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The most powerful supercomputer ever built and operated by Microsoft runs on Ubuntu
https://top500.org/system/180236/

https://redd.it/1pl7j3b
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Where does a Linux Live USB actually run? (Unplugged USB, OS kept working)

So, where is a Live USB installed?

While I was trying out using a live USB to test different distros, I had the brilliant idea of unplugging the drive, and see how everything melts. To my surprise, everything stayed the same, and I was able to keep using that live OS (Mint XFCE), even installing stuff onto it.

So, where was that live environment happening? Couldn't be in the USB drive itself, as it kept working perfectly after unplugging. Couldn't be my main SSD either, of course. Maybe a live desktop from USB loads everything on RAM?

This is important for me as I work with installing OSs for other people, and I need to remove as many external factors as I can, if I have an error and I need to diagnose it.

Thanks!

https://redd.it/1pl91i5
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Is linux right for my laptop

Laptop: 2023 Asus TUF A15 Ryzen 5 RTX 4060

I would like to start off with this: I am a tech novice/noob. I just need help.

With the all the paranoia and hate Windows/Microsoft has been getting I feel that Windows is no longer the OS I want on my laptop.

I’ve only had this laptop for 4 months and one thing that did stood out is that it feels sluggish after awhile and the 16GB ram it came with feels like it isn’t enough anymore. I wonder if the OS is the reason.

Main question:
1)Would my laptop work with Linux?
2) if yes to the first question, would I still have the ram concern?

https://redd.it/1plby9w
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Built a full OpenVPN3 GUI for Linux (tested on COSMIC) — live graph, tray icon, auto-reconnect
https://redd.it/1ple1ob
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New Linux patch confirms: Rust experiment is done, Rust is here to stay
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Rust-To-Stay-Linux-Kernel

https://redd.it/1plepwo
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Jens Axboe (creator of io_uring) runs KDE Plasma
https://redd.it/1plfpde
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Just curious, How many of you are still booting Windows 11 (or 10 even) with Linux?

This is more of a question than discussion but I'd also love to know why you're dual booting. I'm asking because I know there's a good portion of you guys who still need Windows for like gaming and stuff like that.

When I switched to Linux in 2018, I dropped Windows like a hot potato. I had zero use for it and it would have just unnecessarily eaten up a lot of disk space. I was pretty much done with Windows in 2018 because Windows 10 was slower than molasses on a perfectly running machine. I saw no point in upgrading the system I had just so I could run Windows 10. I was tired of doing that.

I've still got my old Windows 95 system, Old XP system and I think another one. I used my Windows 7 system with Linux after Windows 10 came out. Ran it 4 more years before things started dying on it. That was a first. Allowing the system to slow down and die on me was a first. Usually, the machine lasted up until I needed to upgrade Windows. And half the time it wouldn't run on the older system where the previous version ran great. Well, I was pretty much done shelving a perfectly good system just to replace an OS. And I'm kinda glad I did that. Windows 10 & 11 I'm reading have been giving people the most problems. I think they just made it too secure now.

So, I've been done with Windows since 2018. I'm interested to know the overall feeling of dual booting Linux and Windows. I did do this myself back in 2007-2008 for about 6 months. I did a hard drive swap between Windows and Linux. Worked really well but I noticed, I spent 80% of my time in Linux while the other 20% was me editing photos in Windows. There wasn't really a good RAW file editor in Linux at the time so I kinda had to rely on Photoshop and Lightroom for that kind of stuff. The rest of the time, I spent in Linux. Ubuntu mainly.

So, I'm just wondering how many people are dual booting Windows 10 or 11 with a Linux distro. ANY Linux distro really. And why do you still use Windows? I'm expecting a lot of gaming reasons which I totally get.

https://redd.it/1pliu7z
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GPU-VIEWER 3.23 Release
https://redd.it/1plj49r
@r_linux

Linux desktop environments from the Dungeons & Dragons perspective

A typical aging geek's weekend chatter. Nothing to see here.

Gnome: Lawful Evil. It's their way or the highway. Extensions should be checked for heresy on every major update.
KDE: Chaotic Neutral. It spreads in all the directions at once driven purely by the urge of reproduction. Different parts contradict each other all the time.
Cinnamon: Lawful Neutral. A limited but thoughtfully chosen set of no-frills tools for your daily life. As square as it gets.
Xfce, LXQt: Lawful Good. They preserve the old ways for those who still need them; no plans to take over the world.

And while we are at it,

Windows: Neutral Evil. Milks the unpretentious mass market for no other reason but profit. No agenda; features are added and changed depending on what sells better and costs less.
MacOS: Chaotic Evil, hubris marketed as freedom. Bring us all your money to stay better than thy neighbor, in his face.

P. S. Trust me I know that Windows and MacOS are not desktop environments in the strict sense. (Nor are they Linux.) Yet, both have unique and easy recognizable desktop paradigms.

https://redd.it/1plkcxg
@r_linux

ReBAR code cleaned up for Linux 6.19 along with a few new PCIe controller drivers
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-PCI

https://redd.it/1pll6ib
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Opengl on linux
https://redd.it/1pln34l
@r_linux

This Week in Plasma: Wayland screen mirroring and custom modes
https://blogs.kde.org/2025/12/13/this-week-in-plasma-wayland-screen-mirroring-and-custom-modes/

https://redd.it/1pll89j
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