Weighing in with Ncdu

Ncdu to Go

Ncdu can also redirect the output to a file for later analysis, as follows:

ncdu /home/Downloads -o Downloads-txtcommand

The following command:

ncdu -1xo- /home/Downloads | gzip >Downloads.gz

dumps the output into an archive format. To view the archive later on, enter:

zcat Downloads.gz | ncdu -f-

To view the unpacked text version, use:

ncdu -f Downloads.txt

Conclusions

Ncdu is a useful tool for analyzing the available disk space and locating and removing the biggest space-wasting files. In addition to the other benefits of working at the command line, Ncdu is faster than its GUI-enabled colleagues. You can also include Ncdu in scripts or run it as a cronjob.

Infos

  1. Ncdu: https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu
  2. ncurses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ncurses
  3. QDirStat: https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat/releases
  4. Filelight: https://userbase.kde.org/Filelight
  5. Baobab: https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/DiskUsageAnalyzer?action=show&redirect=Apps%2FBaobab

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