du (abbreviated from disk usage) is a standard program used to estimate file space usage—space used under a particular directory or files on a file system.
du is part of coreutils, a package of software containing implementations for many of the basic tools, such as cat, ls, and rm, which are used on Unix-like operating systems.
If you execute du without any options it will output the sizes of all files starting in your current directory and all subdirectories of your current directory.
There are lots of budding developers who have developed software to improve on du in a number of regards. The tools featured here are all command line tools or ncurses interface.
We make the following recommendations captured in our ratings chart.

You might be aware that Duc comes with a number of user interfaces for querying the system. It can be used on the console with a command line or ncurses interface, on graphical desktops with an X or OpenGL GUI, or over the web using the CGI interface.
Let’s explore the 22 ‘du’ tools at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, a screenshot of the software in action, together with links to relevant resources.
| du alternatives | Programming Language | License |
|---|---|---|
| dust | Rust | Apache License 2.0 |
| duf | Go | MIT License |
| Duc | C | GNU Lesser General Public License v3 |
| Ncdu | C | GNU GPL v2.0 License |
| gdu | Go | MIT License |
| dua | Rust | MIT License |
| erdtree | Rust | MIT License |
| vizex | Python | MIT License |
| godu | Go | MIT License |
| dutree | Rust | GNU General Public License v3 |
| pdu | Rust | Apache License 2.0 |
| space | Rust | MIT License |
| whalespotter | Rust | MIT License |
| diskus | Rust | MIT License or Apache License 2.0 |
| sn | Rust | BSD 3-Clause “New” or “Revised” License |
| duviz | Python | MIT License |
| dirstat-rs | Rust | MIT License |
| bonsai | C++ | GNU General Public License v3.0 |
| tdu | Go | GNU General Public License v2 |
| diskonaut | Rust | MIT License |
| cdu | Perl | GNU General Public License v2.0 |
| dut | C | GNU General Public License v3.0 |
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All the CLI tools in this series.
| Alternatives to CLI tools |
|---|
| age // awk // bc // cal // cat // cd // chmod // cksum // cloc // cmp // compress // cp // cron // curl // cut // date // dd // df // diff // dig // du // fdisk // file // find // free // ftp // grep // gzip // hexdump // history // jq // kill // less // locate // ls // lsof // make // man // more // mv / ping // ps // psql // rename // rm // sed // split // ssh // stow // strings // sudo // sysctl // tail // talk // tar // telnet // time // top // touch // traceroute // tree // uname // uniq // uptime // vi // watch // Wget // who // whois // xargs |
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |


sn is a replacement for du
Thanks, sn was added but I omitted to reply at the time.