On Tue, 29 Jun 2010, Daniel Feenberg wrote:
> > > On Tue, 29 Jun 2010, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: > >> >> Ah yes. They're using the same compression algorithm as 7zip, but they're >> in-line-filterable, and behave just like a normal "gzip" command etc. >> >> AKA, there is never any reason to use bzip2. Using lzma --fast is much >> faster, and better compression than bzip2. It's superior in every way. > > I think that if you are sending files to another person, it is much more > important that he/she have the decompression software than that the file > be small. At least that is what I feel when I receive a file. It is part > of "be conservative in what you send", etc. I agree with this logic, and I'd extend it a bit to say use the algorithm that makes sense for the task. If I'm just compressing something trivial to mail to someone, I use gzip--it's fast, everybody pretty much has it now, and the compression ratio is acceptable. If I'm archiving something huge that I really don't intend to decompress more than once or twice, then I'm going to use the maximum ratio I can find, with the caveat that I only use FOSS for this stuff partly because I'm a FOSS guy, but mostly because I don't want to run the risk of having the tool unavailable when I want the data back. Or maybe it's data that I'd need to get back in a hurry because a need to recover would only happen during system downtime so decompression time is relevant...lots of parameters... Good to have the data, that's very helpful in making these decisions. Dave _______________________________________________ bblisa mailing list [email protected] http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa
