cd / && du -sh * cd / && du -sh *Human-readable units are nice, but without them it's easier to sort by size.
du -s * | sort -n du -sh * | sort -h coreutils-5.93.tar.bz2 2005-11-06 09:06 du -h | perl -e 'sub h{%h=(K=>10,M=>20,G=>30);($n,$u)=shift=~/([0-9.]+)(\D)/; return $n*2**$h{$u}}print sort{h($b)<=>h($a)}<>;'
du's output does the first level of directories, but not subdirectories, and also requires reading of text rather than visually comparing line lengths (easier).
Or, it may not (the initial problem I had, I already knew the high level breakdowns, and was hunting for wasted 1%'s here and there -- the flame graph made it easy to spy everything at once).
Another use of the flame graph approach is with automated build software. Imagine automatically generating one with every linux version, to keep track of where growth is.
Output is related to your present working directory.