Last Updated on June 4, 2023
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.
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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 13 ‘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.
erdtree was recently added to this article.
| 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 |
| dutree | Rust | GNU General Public License v3 |
| erdtree | Rust | MIT License |
| vizex | Python | MIT License |
| godu | Go | MIT License |
| pdu | Rust | Apache License 2.0 |
| tdu | Go | GNU General Public License v2 |
| dirstat-rs | Rust | MIT License |
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 // find // ftp // grep // gzip // hexdump // history // jq // kill // less // locate // ls // lsof // make // man // more // mv / ping // ps // psql // rename // rm // sed // split // ssh // strings // sudo // sysctl // talk // tar // telnet // time // top // touch // traceroute // tree // uname // uniq // uptime // vi // watch // Wget // who // whois // xargs |
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |
sn is a replacement for du