bzip2 vrs xz ( Should we be using it for day to day functions ? )

In this post, I will show a simple demonstration with  bzip2 vrs xz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xz

As you should know, the bzip2 compression libs typically achieves a higher compression ratios for the same data vrs other popular known compression utilities. In this case, my test file named "bigfile.txt" was compressed with bzip2 and then xz . I took a md5 hash of the original data file to show you that nothing has changed and it's the exact same file


Please enjoy !

The Compression bake-off  ( bzip2 vrs xz  )

note that xz was 2x+ plus more in time for total operation but it gained far more compression.



For S@#t and Grins, I threw in gzip so you can see the total compression values gained.

Now I'm not advocating that  everybody should run out and  start using  xz in all cases, " but a penny saved,  is a penny earned". If you take the above file and let's say you have 1000s of these files on a longtime storage archive/media. And then you wanted to save precious disk space, xz will go a long way with saving disk space.

These two pictures shows you the final word the choice is up to you.

( space savings )

( total system time for compressing )

Compression should be look at with the following thoughts;

•  time to compress
•  final compression ratio
•  total memory  consumptions
•  will data be at rest or in motion ( storage & bandwidth savings  and calculations )

We've have came a long way from  pkzip and stacker compression ;)


Ken Felix
NSE ( Network Security Expert) and Route/Switching Engineer.
kfelix  -----a----t---- socpuppets ---dot---com

    ^     ^
=(  +  + )=
        o 
       /  \