why doesn't disk usage decrease after deleting files

[smason]

I deleted a large folder but when I checked disk usage (e.g. via df -h .) it still shows the same usage

[smason]

presumably the files were moved to the trash instead of being deleted. if you actually want to remove them use Ctrl + r instead

if you're not using a desktop environment you can find these files in ~/.local/share/Trash, to clean up this folder you can use:

rm -r ~/.local/share/Trash