Just recently found a nice compilation of shell command, listing your computers specs in plain text:
List of hardware:
lspci
Linux Kernel configuration (which version of Linux are you using):
uname -a
Hardisk and memory available and used:
free -m
Very nice: Checking the buffered reading speed of your harddisk or whatever device attached:
sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda is my harddisk in this example and produced 60Mb/s three times faster than my USB-disk /dev/sdb.
To find the names /dev/WhatName of the devices:
sudo fdisk -l
Checking the cache reading speed, which represents well more reading from RAM then from the specified device:
sudo hdparm -T /dev/sda
Checking the write speed (from Ubuntuforums)
dd count=1k bs=1M if=/dev/zero of=/media/HD2/test.img
Rforge 