3 ms·

Interesting, i used xz till today for compression, but i think i will use gzip and zstd ffrom now on.

by stop50 4y ago

ars 4y ago
I'll continue using xz - the compression ratio is far better than gzip or zstd. Maybe there will be some new future format to switch to, but zstd is not it.
- stop50 4y ago
  zstd got me already better results, but not all machines i am administering have it installed or even available.
- petre 4y ago
  Yup. To my surprise xz -1 is faster and compresses better than gzip -6, the default setting. Guess what I'm using now? I'll use zstd when the GNU tar in my distribution supports it directly without resorting to pipes and shell magic. It would be nice if one could specify the compression level on the GNU tar command line. BSD tar already does all of the above.
- assttoasstmgr 4y ago
  The rest of the sane world will continue to use gzip because the marginal compression savings is not worth the compatibility issues. I have lost count of the number of times I have urgently needed to extract an xz archive on a system only to find out xz isn't available. Most notably Solaris and embedded systems.
  - kouteiheika 4y ago
    > The rest of the sane world will continue to use gzip because the marginal compression savings is not worth the compatibility issues. It is definitely worth it to use a modern compression format. I regularly take backups of one service I run. Originally I used gzip, and then on someone's recommendation I tried zstd. Here are the results: gzip compression time: 204s zstd compression time: 19.1s gzip decompression time: 28.2s zstd decompression time: 6.4s gzip compressed size: 3.0GB zstd compressed size: 1.7GB I ain't ever going back to gzip, especially when it wastes so much disk space and CPU cycles. > sane world [..] Solaris ...I think we're living in a different world. (:
- smaudet 4y ago
  lzip? Not sure how closely commentators have read to have missed this (obviously plugged by the author) choice... You are not getting compatibility out of xz, not even with itself, if you cared about maximum compatibility you'd be using zip (understood and supported by all major OS at this point), and it sounds like if you just cared about compression ratio you'd use lzip... If it was speed, I could see zstd (or maybe bzip2? not sure how it stacks up), or just compatibility with linux/embedded folks, gzip. The use case for XZ seems actually pretty marginally small, its like holding onto .rar files or some obscure file splitting tool...
  - ars 4y ago
    I don't need compatibility with other machines, I just need to know that in 20 years I'll be able to decompress my files. lzip might get there eventually, but it's not there now. xz has enough usage behind it that I'm not concerned. bzip2 has enough usage but the compression ratio is worse. zstd has neither the usage nor the ratio.
    - smaudet 4y ago
      > I just need to know that in 20 years I'll be able to decompress my files The way the author was talking I wouldn't be sure that's even true, if the authors are mucking about with the container format and xz makes some non-compatible breaking change, you may not even know you can't open old xz files with the new version (it reads versions based upon heuristics rather than a version number, IIRC from the article).
stjohnswarts 4y ago
look into lzip as well

Interesting, i used xz till today for compression, but i think i will use gzip and zstd ffrom now on.

by stop50 4y ago

Interesting, i used xz till today for compression, but i think i will use gzip and zstd ffrom now on.

ars 4y ago

I'll continue using xz - the compression ratio is far better than gzip or zstd. Maybe there will be some new future format to switch to, but zstd is not it.

stop50 4y ago
zstd got me already better results, but not all machines i am administering have it installed or even available.
petre 4y ago
Yup. To my surprise xz -1 is faster and compresses better than gzip -6, the default setting. Guess what I'm using now? I'll use zstd when the GNU tar in my distribution supports it directly without resorting to pipes and shell magic. It would be nice if one could specify the compression level on the GNU tar command line. BSD tar already does all of the above.
assttoasstmgr 4y ago
The rest of the sane world will continue to use gzip because the marginal compression savings is not worth the compatibility issues. I have lost count of the number of times I have urgently needed to extract an xz archive on a system only to find out xz isn't available. Most notably Solaris and embedded systems.
- kouteiheika 4y ago
  > The rest of the sane world will continue to use gzip because the marginal compression savings is not worth the compatibility issues. It is definitely worth it to use a modern compression format. I regularly take backups of one service I run. Originally I used gzip, and then on someone's recommendation I tried zstd. Here are the results: gzip compression time: 204s zstd compression time: 19.1s gzip decompression time: 28.2s zstd decompression time: 6.4s gzip compressed size: 3.0GB zstd compressed size: 1.7GB I ain't ever going back to gzip, especially when it wastes so much disk space and CPU cycles. > sane world [..] Solaris ...I think we're living in a different world. (:
smaudet 4y ago
lzip? Not sure how closely commentators have read to have missed this (obviously plugged by the author) choice... You are not getting compatibility out of xz, not even with itself, if you cared about maximum compatibility you'd be using zip (understood and supported by all major OS at this point), and it sounds like if you just cared about compression ratio you'd use lzip... If it was speed, I could see zstd (or maybe bzip2? not sure how it stacks up), or just compatibility with linux/embedded folks, gzip. The use case for XZ seems actually pretty marginally small, its like holding onto .rar files or some obscure file splitting tool...
- ars 4y ago
  I don't need compatibility with other machines, I just need to know that in 20 years I'll be able to decompress my files. lzip might get there eventually, but it's not there now. xz has enough usage behind it that I'm not concerned. bzip2 has enough usage but the compression ratio is worse. zstd has neither the usage nor the ratio.
  - smaudet 4y ago
    > I just need to know that in 20 years I'll be able to decompress my files The way the author was talking I wouldn't be sure that's even true, if the authors are mucking about with the container format and xz makes some non-compatible breaking change, you may not even know you can't open old xz files with the new version (it reads versions based upon heuristics rather than a version number, IIRC from the article).

stjohnswarts 4y ago

look into lzip as well