Yeah there are various tools around but the most useful for diagnostic purposes tends to be the simplest. In our case we often ask people to post various outputs of lspci
and lsusb
.
For example lspci -nnk | grep net -A2
shows us networking information, including the Kernel module (the driver):
$ lspci -nnk | grep net -A2
09:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd Motherboard [1458:e000]
Kernel driver in use: r8169
0a:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd Motherboard [1458:e000]
Kernel driver in use: r8169
It doesn't need root and it doesn't need to be installed.
I cover more techniques in another question: