6 ms·

A flame graph does not feel like the best visualization for this kind of data. You can't really make anything of the top spikes and there is a lot of blank spac

by ajnin 10y ago

A flame graph does not feel like the best visualization for this kind of data. You can't really make anything of the top spikes and there is a lot of blank space that is wasted. I prefer tree maps as they make more efficient use of the available screen space. My favorite tool for this is SpaceMonger v1.4.0 (http://www.aplusfreeware.com/categories/LFWV/SpaceMonger.html http://www.aplusfreeware.com/categories/LFWV/SpaceMonger.htm...), which has a very neat layout algorithm. It's a Windows app but it works OK using Wine with only a few minor graphic glitches.

ryao 10y ago
I use fsview for this on Linux. It works well, although it is slow when applied to the entire file system.
jamesrom 10y ago
On Windows, WinDirStat is a great tool. https://windirstat.net/ https://windirstat.net/
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  I use it on linux too. I haven't seen anything that comes close in ability to visualize an entire drive.
  - ghostly_s 10y ago
    I believe Windirstat is basically a direct port of K4dirstat, though I've found the outdated interface and KDE dependencies frustrating. I discovered Baobab has a similar box visualization available via an easy-to-miss icon at the bottom of the window, in addition to the default pretty-but-not-very-useful ring graph. Unfortunately both have the major shortcoming of not including individual large files.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      It is, but the rendering method is importantly different. Kdirstat decays into a low-contrast blob on a lot of files.
- wibr 10y ago
  http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ the scanner tool is also quite neat and freeware
- porker 10y ago
  On Windows, TreeSize from http://www.jam-software.de http://www.jam-software.de is one of the few utilities I'm happy to pay for. Blazingly fast and I found its visualizations more intuitive than the others.
- kraftman 10y ago
  And ADirStat for Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.flightofstairs.ADirStat https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.flightofst...
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I'm a sucker for DiskUsage myself. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
- alimbada 10y ago
  The gradients in the WinDirStat UI make me physically cringe; I've always used SpaceSniffer instead.
- allaniamtheking 10y ago
  Directory Report is a good tool if you want to scan millions of files WinDirStat is slow http://www.file-utilities.com http://www.file-utilities.com
- Flenser 10y ago
  There's a fork of windirstat here: https://github.com/ariccio/altWinDirStat https://github.com/ariccio/altWinDirStat It's had most of the functionality ripped out, but it's been optimised to run blazingly fast.
nayuki 10y ago
Tree maps are great for 2D space visualization. About the general concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping
brendangregg 10y ago
Tree maps make better use of space, but comparing box sizes vs lengths is a more difficult perceptive task. And harder to label. Being unable to read thin spikes can be a good thing. There is only enough room to label the biggest boxes -- which are also the ones you care about the most. If I were seriously building a GUI for this, it would let the user switch between visualizations to see which works best.
- hedora 10y ago
  On Linux, there is baobab. It has two visualizations. The useful one is a set of nested pie graph / rings: http://www.marzocca.net/linux/baobab/baobab-ringschart.html http://www.marzocca.net/linux/baobab/baobab-ringschart.html The other has nested squares the size of each directory and its children. It sounds decent in theory, but is as bad as the "MyPlate" visualization in practice: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate I'd put the flamegraph between these two in terms of usability. [edit: Also, thanks for flamegraph, and documenting perf! I use your site all the time. It has saved countless hours at work!]
  - brendangregg 10y ago
    Yes, the nested pie graph is called the sunburst layout. I've commented on it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13575232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13575232
    - hedora 10y ago
      Thanks for the link! I skimmed [10], and assume you are referring to figure 7. I think you've read too much into that result. Starbursts do indeed use angles as part of the rendering algorithm, but for a given subdirectory, you end up comparing lengths just as you would in a flamegraph. The key difference is that the screen real estate used to render the "icicles" increases linearly with the number of levels with sunbursts, but is constant for flamegraphs. This greatly reduces the "10 icicles, each 1-10 pixels wide" problem that flamegraphs have. Also, jumping back to baobab, I find linking the directory tree view widget to the sunburst leads to a much more intuitive/obvious set of navigation primitives -- it makes it easy to jump to a parent or sibling of the current view. As a side effect, they can (and do) put a bar graph on each entry in the tree view, which brings it to "2d position along common aligned scale" which is two levels better than flamegraph or sunburst (3 levels better than sunburst by your reading). This doesn't help the tree view's usefulness for navigation, but it nicely complements the readability issues with sunbursts (or flamegraphs)
amake 10y ago
On macOS I recommend GrandPerspective: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
arm 10y ago
There’s also SpaceSniffer¹ for Windows. ―――――― ¹ — http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/ http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/
- rkv 10y ago
  I use this in my development VM's, great free tool.
- ComodoHacker 10y ago
  I found it superior to anything else on Windows, including WinDirStat.
- Already__Taken 10y ago
  Spacesniffer is fantastic, the custom filter language it's got is quite powerful and super fast once it scanned the target. Start it scanning then minimize it if you're not watching, rendering the screen slows the scan down. Just let it pain when finished.
azernik 10y ago
Gnome's Baobab (comes packaged on Ubuntu as "Disk Usage Analyzer") has this as one of its display modes.
- stuckagain 10y ago
  I love the radial treemap used by baobab. I've used the radial treemap from d3 in a few web visualization projects and it always wows.
Tossrock 10y ago
SpaceMonger is one of the rare pieces of consumer shareware so good that I was compelled to pay for it. Being able to zoom with the mousewheel, google maps style, is incredibly satisfying and useful.
eps 10y ago
Homepage - http://www.stardock.com/products/spacemonger/ http://www.stardock.com/products/spacemonger/
masklinn 10y ago
> You can't really make anything of the top spikes and there is a lot of blank space that is wasted. I prefer tree maps as they make more efficient use of the available screen space. After having tried both treemaps (windirstats, grand perspective, …) and sunbursts (daisy disk), I've got to say I much prefer the latter. It's not quite as space-efficient but it is much clearer and cleaner, and easier to drill down into. Now while a flamegraph is equivalent to a sunburst in linear rather than circular shape, I don't think it's as good: the "outer rings" of the sunburst graph means more surface area for the same amount of data, which makes it much easier to evaluate the leaves's relative weight within their rings.
rangibaby 10y ago
Grand perspective is the same as this but for Mac.
Const-me 10y ago
Agree. As for the specific tool, I use this one, similar principle: http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/ http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/ Not updated since 2002 but still works great on my Windows 10.
jfindley 10y ago
Personally, I like it for the same reasons as you dislike it! Being unable to read the names of the small spikes is a feature, not a bug - I don't care about any directory too small to see, and hiding them like this (but still giving me an idea of their presence if I want to explore further) is useful. Perhaps it's just because I spend a lot of time looking at flame graphs, but this for me is perfect. It's just a shame that it requires two steps (run the script, open in browser). Perhaps I'll write a GUI wrapper around it that does everything all in one...
- sleepychu 10y ago
  I'd really love a terminal emulator that could parse svg nicely and display it.
  - jfindley 10y ago
    That might be a better idea, actually - a general purpose terminal with SVG support. I guess while one's at it, it could include PGN/JPEG support too...

by ajnin 10y ago

ryao 10y ago

I use fsview for this on Linux. It works well, although it is slow when applied to the entire file system.

jamesrom 10y ago

On Windows, WinDirStat is a great tool. https://windirstat.net/ https://windirstat.net/

Dylan16807 10y ago
I use it on linux too. I haven't seen anything that comes close in ability to visualize an entire drive.
- ghostly_s 10y ago
  I believe Windirstat is basically a direct port of K4dirstat, though I've found the outdated interface and KDE dependencies frustrating. I discovered Baobab has a similar box visualization available via an easy-to-miss icon at the bottom of the window, in addition to the default pretty-but-not-very-useful ring graph. Unfortunately both have the major shortcoming of not including individual large files.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    It is, but the rendering method is importantly different. Kdirstat decays into a low-contrast blob on a lot of files.
wibr 10y ago
http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ the scanner tool is also quite neat and freeware
porker 10y ago
On Windows, TreeSize from http://www.jam-software.de http://www.jam-software.de is one of the few utilities I'm happy to pay for. Blazingly fast and I found its visualizations more intuitive than the others.
kraftman 10y ago
And ADirStat for Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.flightofstairs.ADirStat https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.flightofst...
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I'm a sucker for DiskUsage myself. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
alimbada 10y ago
The gradients in the WinDirStat UI make me physically cringe; I've always used SpaceSniffer instead.
allaniamtheking 10y ago
Directory Report is a good tool if you want to scan millions of files WinDirStat is slow http://www.file-utilities.com http://www.file-utilities.com
Flenser 10y ago
There's a fork of windirstat here: https://github.com/ariccio/altWinDirStat https://github.com/ariccio/altWinDirStat It's had most of the functionality ripped out, but it's been optimised to run blazingly fast.

nayuki 10y ago

Tree maps are great for 2D space visualization. About the general concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping

brendangregg 10y ago

Tree maps make better use of space, but comparing box sizes vs lengths is a more difficult perceptive task. And harder to label. Being unable to read thin spikes can be a good thing. There is only enough room to label the biggest boxes -- which are also the ones you care about the most. If I were seriously building a GUI for this, it would let the user switch between visualizations to see which works best.

hedora 10y ago
On Linux, there is baobab. It has two visualizations. The useful one is a set of nested pie graph / rings: http://www.marzocca.net/linux/baobab/baobab-ringschart.html http://www.marzocca.net/linux/baobab/baobab-ringschart.html The other has nested squares the size of each directory and its children. It sounds decent in theory, but is as bad as the "MyPlate" visualization in practice: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate I'd put the flamegraph between these two in terms of usability. [edit: Also, thanks for flamegraph, and documenting perf! I use your site all the time. It has saved countless hours at work!]
- brendangregg 10y ago
  Yes, the nested pie graph is called the sunburst layout. I've commented on it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13575232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13575232
  - hedora 10y ago
    Thanks for the link! I skimmed [10], and assume you are referring to figure 7. I think you've read too much into that result. Starbursts do indeed use angles as part of the rendering algorithm, but for a given subdirectory, you end up comparing lengths just as you would in a flamegraph. The key difference is that the screen real estate used to render the "icicles" increases linearly with the number of levels with sunbursts, but is constant for flamegraphs. This greatly reduces the "10 icicles, each 1-10 pixels wide" problem that flamegraphs have. Also, jumping back to baobab, I find linking the directory tree view widget to the sunburst leads to a much more intuitive/obvious set of navigation primitives -- it makes it easy to jump to a parent or sibling of the current view. As a side effect, they can (and do) put a bar graph on each entry in the tree view, which brings it to "2d position along common aligned scale" which is two levels better than flamegraph or sunburst (3 levels better than sunburst by your reading). This doesn't help the tree view's usefulness for navigation, but it nicely complements the readability issues with sunbursts (or flamegraphs)

amake 10y ago

On macOS I recommend GrandPerspective: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/

arm 10y ago

There’s also SpaceSniffer¹ for Windows. ―――――― ¹ — http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/ http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/

rkv 10y ago
I use this in my development VM's, great free tool.
ComodoHacker 10y ago
I found it superior to anything else on Windows, including WinDirStat.
Already__Taken 10y ago
Spacesniffer is fantastic, the custom filter language it's got is quite powerful and super fast once it scanned the target. Start it scanning then minimize it if you're not watching, rendering the screen slows the scan down. Just let it pain when finished.

azernik 10y ago

Gnome's Baobab (comes packaged on Ubuntu as "Disk Usage Analyzer") has this as one of its display modes.

stuckagain 10y ago
I love the radial treemap used by baobab. I've used the radial treemap from d3 in a few web visualization projects and it always wows.

Tossrock 10y ago

SpaceMonger is one of the rare pieces of consumer shareware so good that I was compelled to pay for it. Being able to zoom with the mousewheel, google maps style, is incredibly satisfying and useful.

eps 10y ago

Homepage - http://www.stardock.com/products/spacemonger/ http://www.stardock.com/products/spacemonger/

masklinn 10y ago

> You can't really make anything of the top spikes and there is a lot of blank space that is wasted. I prefer tree maps as they make more efficient use of the available screen space. After having tried both treemaps (windirstats, grand perspective, …) and sunbursts (daisy disk), I've got to say I much prefer the latter. It's not quite as space-efficient but it is much clearer and cleaner, and easier to drill down into. Now while a flamegraph is equivalent to a sunburst in linear rather than circular shape, I don't think it's as good: the "outer rings" of the sunburst graph means more surface area for the same amount of data, which makes it much easier to evaluate the leaves's relative weight within their rings.

rangibaby 10y ago

Grand perspective is the same as this but for Mac.

Const-me 10y ago

Agree. As for the specific tool, I use this one, similar principle: http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/ http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/ Not updated since 2002 but still works great on my Windows 10.

jfindley 10y ago

Personally, I like it for the same reasons as you dislike it! Being unable to read the names of the small spikes is a feature, not a bug - I don't care about any directory too small to see, and hiding them like this (but still giving me an idea of their presence if I want to explore further) is useful. Perhaps it's just because I spend a lot of time looking at flame graphs, but this for me is perfect. It's just a shame that it requires two steps (run the script, open in browser). Perhaps I'll write a GUI wrapper around it that does everything all in one...

sleepychu 10y ago
I'd really love a terminal emulator that could parse svg nicely and display it.
- jfindley 10y ago
  That might be a better idea, actually - a general purpose terminal with SVG support. I guess while one's at it, it could include PGN/JPEG support too...