DU: only show folders at depth
If you are using GNU du you can use the -S or --separate-dirs option to not include the size of subdirectories when calculating the usage for the parent.
Your du command may not support this option.
You can use this couple with sort to get the largest individual directories (assuming GNU tools):
du --separate-dirs -h . |sort -h
Personally, I just combine it with the power of GNU sort:
du -ch | sort -h
This will cause the sizes to be sorted in a human readable format. For example:
$ du -h /usr/ | head -20 | sort -h
8.0K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/misc
12K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/drm/i2c
12K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/net/netfilter/ipv4
16K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/net/netfilter/ipv6
20K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/net/phonet
28K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/acpi/platform
52K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/net/netns
60K /usr/lib32/libv4l
76K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/net/caif
96K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/scsi/fc
108K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/net/bluetooth
112K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/drm/ttm
148K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/net/netfilter
264K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/rdma
284K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/acpi
596K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/drm
608K /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common/include/scsi
668K /usr/games
6.3M /usr/lib32/gconv
8.9M /usr/lib32
From man sort:
-h, --human-numeric-sort
compare human readable numbers (e.g., 2K 1G)
It still shows the ones you don't care about, but it is now very easy to find the ones you do.
If you are just looking for a clearly-arranged view, I recommend the durep package.
Example output:
root@dogmeat:~# durep -td 4 -hs 50M /usr/
[ /usr 4.8G (0 files, 9 dirs) ]
1.9G [########### ] 38.57% lib/
463.6M [####### ] 24.46% x86_64-linux-gnu/
102.3M [###### ] 22.07% wine/
276.2M [#### ] 14.57% i386-linux-gnu/
96.1M [########## ] 34.80% wine/
222.4M [### ] 11.73% libreoffice/
189.3M [######################### ] 85.12% program/
122.6M [# ] 6.47% chromium-browser/
87.6M [##################### ] 71.46% chromium-browser
79.5M [# ] 4.19% virtualbox/
79.4M [# ] 4.19% jvm/
73.4M [########################### ] 92.52% java-7-openjdk-amd64/
73.4M [############################# ] 99.99% jre/
75.7M [# ] 3.99% python2.7/
58.4M [####################### ] 77.21% dist-packages/
58.9M [ ] 3.11% firefox/
52.2M [ ] 2.75% libwireshark.so.2.0.2
1.4G [######## ] 29.56% src/
1.2G [####### ] 26.03% share/
211.6M [#### ] 16.54% fonts/
199.3M [############################ ] 94.18% truetype/
84.2M [############ ] 42.23% horai-umefont/
174.6M [#### ] 13.64% icons/
91.5M [############### ] 52.39% gnome/
66.4M [##################### ] 72.60% icon-theme.cache
77.5M [# ] 6.05% gimp/
77.5M [##############################] 100.00% 2.0/
66.2M [######################### ] 85.43% help/
74.4M [# ] 5.82% virtualbox/
56.9M [###################### ] 76.42% VBoxGuestAdditions.iso
62.9M [# ] 4.91% doc/
240.1M [# ] 4.89% bin/
Use the -td parameter to specify the maximum depth, and the -hs parameter to specify a minimum size for a folder to show up in the results.