Linux has plenty of Disk Usage Analyzers that you can use to view various types of the data stored on your system. The best part about the linux is that it offers various ways to solve same problem. You get an option to view the same problem differently and also use the data in different scenarios.
Filelight
KDE has an interesting application that allows you to view various files and folders distributed data in pie format. I love such disk viewers. Interesting part is that KDE also made Windows version too. So if you are reading this and want this app for windows you can find it in Microsoft store.
Image Credit: KDE
Disk Usage Analyzer (Gnome)
Gnome too has external app that can show the Disk Usage Analysis content in an app. You may find this similar to filelight only difference being it is designed with gnome in mind. It does not just limit itself with the pie chart but also shows you numbers with specific location where the data is stored.
Image credit: baobab
System Commands
Most of the distros come up with these commands prebuilt into distro. Some of the commands you can check out for the disk analysis.
df: This command allows you to view the used space and the available space on the disk.
df -a
(This command displays all files in file system)
du: This command goes a bit deeper than the du command, you can view the space used in each subdirectories.
du -a
This command display everything within specified disk and it does not limit to specific directory.
Now that we are on the topic of the commands, you can also check out stats command. This command like du and df also displays the size and other stats that you want on specific directory or entire file system.
Command Line Tools
There are literally countless numbers of CLI tools that you can use for analyzing the disk.
dust
This command line tool designed in rust basically is displaying the output of the du command. But this works lot better considering you also get the filesystem usage in visual form.
Image Credit: Github repository
My experience with dust is lot fun. I like it how it displays the information which is easy to read.
I posted about it on twitter in the past. I am sticking with this tool now.
https://twitter.com/devnamipress/status/1309818499855011840
- devnamipress
So wrapping it up. That's my exploration so far with the Linux space usage analyzers. I have yet to settle on any specific tool. I guess I have to keep on searching for the tool that suits my visual taste and also gives enough information about the disk and other file system information as well.
Which disk usage analyzer do you use?
