WinDirStat on Linux: the native alternatives

• Why not just run it in Wine?
• The native options
  • Storage Sifter (ours)
  • baobab (GNOME Disk Usage Analyzer)
  • Filelight (KDE)
  • ncdu (terminal)
  • dust, gdu, duf
• Which one to pick
• What is different about a Linux disk

If you came to Linux from Windows, WinDirStat is probably the tool you miss first. You point it at a drive, it draws every file as a coloured rectangle sized by how much space it uses, and the problem is immediately visible.

The short answer: do not run WinDirStat under Wine. Native Linux tools do the same job better, because they understand Linux filesystems, permissions, and where the space actually goes on a Linux machine.

Why not just run it in Wine?#

You can, and people do. It mostly works. It is still the wrong call:

• It sees your filesystem through Wine's drive mapping, so what it reports and what your system reports do not always line up.
• Deleting from inside it does not use your desktop's trash, so mistakes are permanent.
• It knows nothing about the things that actually fill a Linux disk: package caches, journal logs, Docker layers, Flatpak runtimes, snapshots.
• The scan is slower through the translation layer, on the exact task where speed is the point.

You are adding a compatibility layer to run a worse version of something you can have natively for free.

The native options#

Storage Sifter (ours)#

Storage Sifter is the closest thing to the WinDirStat experience on Linux, and it is what we built for exactly this reason. It is a squarified treemap like WinDirStat's, GPU-accelerated, colour-coded by what a file is rather than by extension alone.

The part WinDirStat never had: right-click anything and it gives you a plain verdict on whether it is safe to delete, what the path actually is (a cache, a build directory, personal media, a code project, credentials, installed software), and where there is a cleaner way to reclaim the space than deleting, the exact command for your distribution's package manager.

It moves to trash by default, refuses protected system roots outright, and never deletes anything on its own. Free, open source, MIT, no telemetry, and it runs entirely on your machine.

Install it as an AppImage, from the AUR on Arch (yay -S storagesifter-bin), or build it with Cargo.

baobab (GNOME Disk Usage Analyzer)#

Already installed on most GNOME systems, so try it first if you just want an answer right now. It draws rings rather than a treemap, which some people find easier to read and some find harder. It is dependable, it is well integrated with the desktop, and it does nothing surprising.

Where it stops: it shows you sizes and leaves every judgment to you. No file classification, no deletion guidance.

Filelight (KDE)#

The KDE equivalent, also concentric rings, also good. Fast, integrates with Dolphin, and comfortable if you are already in a Plasma session. Same limitation as baobab: it answers "how big", not "what is this and can it go".

ncdu (terminal)#

Not a treemap at all, and still the right tool in one specific case: a machine you only reach over SSH. It is a fast, keyboard-driven browser over du output, it runs anywhere, and it needs no graphics stack. If you administer servers, install it on all of them.

dust, gdu, duf#

Modern command-line takes on the same idea. dust prints a readable tree with bars, gdu is a fast ncdu-alike, duf is a nicer df. Worth knowing about if you live in a terminal.

Which one to pick#

What is different about a Linux disk#

Whichever tool you land on, the things filling your drive are not the same ones that filled your Windows drive. The usual Linux suspects:

• /var/cache/apt/archives or /var/cache/pacman/pkg, downloaded packages that were never cleaned up.
• The systemd journal, which grows until it is told not to (journalctl --disk-usage).
• Docker images, containers, and build cache (docker system df). Frequently the single largest item on a developer machine.
• ~/.cache, where browsers and build tooling accumulate quietly.
• Flatpak runtimes and old Snap revisions.
• Btrfs or Timeshift snapshots, which hold onto everything you have deleted.

That last one is also the reason a Linux disk can look full while a treemap adds up to much less. We cover that, and the deleted-but-still-open-file case, in how to find what is using disk space on Linux.

Storage Sifter is our free, open-source disk-usage treemap for Linux, built by Fopull LLC. Source on GitHub.