I was wondering if there is any way to see the total hard drive space used by any program, after the installation has been completed?
4 Answers
For a particular package:
apt-cache show <packagename> | grep -E '^(.*Size|Version|Package)'
Add or remove fields in the grep string as necessary. Since multiple versions may be present, I added the Version and Package fields as well. Note that the Installed Size
field is an estimated value, in KB, whereas the Size field is for the package file and is in bytes.
Example:
apt-cache show blender | grep -E '^(.*Size|Version|Package)'
Package: blender
Version: 2.71~git201406121839.169c95b-0irie1~trusty1
Installed-Size: 140334
Size: 39108640
Package: blender
Installed-Size: 63238
Version: 2.69-4ubuntu2
Size: 18696012
To get a list of installed packages, see How to list all installed packages Essentially:
dpkg --get-selections | grep -v deinstall
-
Thanks. I noticed that the Installed-size listing gives a slightly different number than what is shown in Synaptic. What accounts for that difference? – plu Jul 15 '14 at 18:31
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@plu According to the Debian Policy Manual:
Actual installed size may vary based on block size, file system properties, or actions taken by package maintainer scripts.
for example, a package like flash-installer downloads flash in the maintainer scripts. The exact reason would depend on the package. Synaptic probably computes the total size of the all the files in the package. – muru Jul 15 '14 at 21:48
Here is an answer which doesn't show directly asked packages info, it is covered in other answers in this thread, but though you will probably find helpful to have a list of what takes a lot of space on your file system.
sudo du / -h|sort -n -r|less
will show you the biggest files of your /
at the top of the screen.
It is generally related to looking for taken space,

- 3,795
-
To me, this fails to answer the question as it is not related to installed programs/packages. This command will calculate the size of
~
, where most programs are not. – John WH Smith Jul 14 '14 at 17:41 -
@JohnWHSmith I though by analogy one can replace
~
with/
but ok, I changed it. – Ruslan Gerasimov Jul 14 '14 at 21:17 -
Again, this does not answer the question.
du
acts at a lower level : it measures file sizes. It can't tell the size taken by a package, or a set of packages (unless you tell it exactly where each and every file of the package is, which will probably take you some time). – John WH Smith Jul 14 '14 at 21:23 -
You can do this graphically in Synaptic. if it is not installed, Install it with the command:
sudo apt install synaptic
then:
- First ensure that you enabled the
Installed Size
andDownload size
columns (or only one if you want that one). - To do this, go to
Settings>Preferences
and chooseColumns and Fonts
, then tick the columns you want to see. - !Then click "OK".
Now whenever you will search package It will show Download size and installed size.

- 480
- 1
- 4
- 12
Would there be any suggested changes I can make to this question?
– plu Mar 14 '19 at 22:32wajig
, I do:wajig sizes |sed -E 's/^\S+\s+(\S+).+/\1/' | sed -E s/,// | awk '{s+=$1} END {print s}'
– Rolf Mar 17 '19 at 14:27