In our daily use of Linux/Unix systems, we use many command-line tools to complete our work and to understand and manage our systems—tools like **du** to monitor disk utilization and **top** to show system resources. Some of these tools have existed for a long time. For example, **top** was first released in 1984, while **du**'s first release dates to 1971.
Over the years, these tools have been modernized and ported to different systems, but, in general, they still follow their original idea, look, and feel.
These are great tools and essential to many system administrators’ workflows. However, in recent years, the open source community has developed alternative tools that offer additional benefits. Some are just eye candy, but others greatly improve usability, making them a great choice to use on modern systems. These include the following five alternatives to the standard Linux command-line tools.
1. ncdu as a replacement for du
The NCurses Disk Usage (**ncdu**) tool provides similar results to **du** but in a curses-based, interactive interface that focuses on the directories that consume most of your disk space.
**ncdu** spends some time analyzing the disk, then displays the results sorted by your most used directories or files, like this:
ncdu 1.14.2 ~ Use the arrow keys to navigate, press ? for help
--- /home/rgerardi ------------------------------------------------------------
96.7 GiB [##########] /libvirt
33.9 GiB [### ] /.crc
7.0 GiB [ ] /Projects
. 4.7 GiB [ ] /Downloads
. 3.9 GiB [ ] /.local
2.5 GiB [ ] /.minishift
2.4 GiB [ ] /.vagrant.d
. 1.9 GiB [ ] /.config
. 1.8 GiB [ ] /.cache
1.7 GiB [ ] /Videos
1.1 GiB [ ] /go
692.6 MiB [ ] /Documents
. 591.5 MiB [ ] /tmp
139.2 MiB [ ] /.var
104.4 MiB [ ] /.oh-my-zsh
82.0 MiB [ ] /scripts
55.8 MiB [ ] /.mozilla
54.6 MiB [ ] /.kube
41.8 MiB [ ] /.vim
31.5 MiB [ ] /.ansible
31.3 MiB [ ] /.gem
26.5 MiB [ ] /.VIM_UNDO_FILES
15.3 MiB [ ] /Personal
2.6 MiB [ ] .ansible_module_generated
1.4 MiB [ ] /backgrounds
944.0 KiB [ ] /Pictures
644.0 KiB [ ] .zsh_history
536.0 KiB [ ] /.ansible_async
Total disk usage: 159.4 GiB Apparent size: 280.8 GiB Items: 561540
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