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22 Best Free and Open Source Replacements for du

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.

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 alternativesProgramming LanguageLicense
dustRustApache License 2.0
dufGoMIT License
DucCGNU Lesser General Public License v3
NcduCGNU GPL v2.0 License
gduGo MIT License
duaRustMIT License
erdtreeRustMIT License
vizexPythonMIT License
goduGo MIT License
dutreeRustGNU General Public License v3
pduRustApache License 2.0
spaceRustMIT License
whalespotterRustMIT License
diskusRustMIT License or Apache License 2.0
snRustBSD 3-Clause “New” or “Revised” License
duvizPythonMIT License
dirstat-rsRustMIT License
bonsaiC++GNU General Public License v3.0
tduGoGNU General Public License v2
diskonautRustMIT License
cduPerlGNU General Public License v2.0
dutCGNU General Public License v3.0

This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.

Have we missed any open source alternatives to du? Please let us know!
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Other alternatives to du?x

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

Best Free and Open Source Software 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.

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Obelik
Obelik
2 years ago
Have we missed any open source alternatives to du? Please let us know!" Read more »

sn is a replacement for du