Directory size in Linux

If you have ever wondered how to get list of directories together with their sizes sorted with descending order, here comes the solution

du -k * | sort -nr | cut -f2 | xargs -d '\n' du -sh

du -s -h * | sort -h -r

found here: http://serverfault.com/questions/62411/how-can-i-sort-du-h-output-by-size