WEIRD SCENES AT THE LINUX OASIS

As part of my transitioning to Linux process, I'm posting some random oddities that might be helpful to any of the future Windows refugees that I'm sure will be increasing in numbers as part of the great Windows 11 exodus of 2025.

 This is a typical example of the weird process of finding good Linux software. Like many aspects of Linux, sometimes it seems as if it's all being deliberately made as hard as possible.

A basic tool I want on my computer, is a graphic display to show all my drives (I have an operating drive and two slaves). I just want it to show all the folders and display how much space they are taking up. On Windows there are plenty of free options available, and it's fairly easy to find OK ones. https://www.lifewire.com/free-disk-space-analyzer-tools-3986870

Meanwhile on Linux they are like the holy grail, with searches all leading to geeks going on about typing commands in terminal and viewing this data without actually having any GUI (Graphical User Interface). So all totally useless... And then there are lots of apps with stupid looking coloured pie charts. So also totally useless...

What is this purpose of this circular crap?

I was just about ready to give up but a little voice in my head said "this is Linux, you can find anything, never give up" So I kept looking at compilations of useless drive analyzers, until I stumbled upon this one: 3 open source GUI disk usage analyzers for Linux 

The first one was so lame I nearly didn't keep scrolling, but luckily I did because their third choice turned out to be just what I was looking for. It's called QDirStat and it's fairly similar to the one I was using on Windows, but actually better because it works much faster.

This is how I view it:

 

It can also show all sorts of other stuff including some really ugly coloured crap, but that can all be turned off:

 

That is not how I view it!

Success! But yet again the best program on Linux was hidden under a mountain of unusable geek garbage. And that is one of the things that makes switching to Linux more difficult than it needs to be. The entire process was very similar to what I had to do to find a good file browser when I was trying out some different distros.  

 

It's all in the name

Part of why QDirStat was hard to find is that it has a meaningless, incomprehensible, forgettable name. Maybe that's why nobody talks about it. 

What would I call it? Maybe something like "FAGI" (File Analyzer Graphical Interface) - I'd aim for something memorable and a bit dodgy. (Like GIMP!)