MadBuntu

Baobab is a handy little utility that I have really come to like.  Baobab provides an easy to visualize layout of the used space on your hard disk.  Although this doesn’t sound that useful, I find myself using it all the time to see where I have recoverable disk space.

If your using Gnome, Baobab is listed as Disk Usage Analyzer under Applications->Accessories.  My KDE 4.1 installation did not have it on the menu, but it can be added via Kmenuedit or run from the command line with the command:

sean@redstar:~$ /usr/bin/baobab &

Baobab is a Gnome application, so if you run it under a different window manager you will need to to have the gnome libraries installed.

Once Baobab is up, we need to scan the filesystem.  This will take a minute, but will provide the detailed information we want.

After the scan is done we have a good graphical view.

The neat part is you can drill down into the directories to get details on what is actually taking up all your filesystem space.

One thing to note, if you do not have permission to a directory, Baobab will not display a graphical view of it.

Link to the Baobab Homepage