Updated: 28 September 2026 · Applies to: AlmaLinux 9, Rocky Linux 9, Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 12
Two commands show disk space on Linux: df for whole file systems and du for folders.
Free space on each file system
df -h
Look at the Size, Used, Avail and Use% columns for the mount point, for example / or /home. df -i shows inodes (number of files) instead.
Size of a folder
du -sh /home
Find what uses the space
du -h --max-depth=1 /home | sort -rh | head -n 15
Run it again on the largest folder to go deeper. Old backups, logs in /var/log and cache folders are common culprits.
