An ode to pack: gzip’s forgotten decompressor
The next default compressor might be lrzip [1] by Con Kolivas; I&#x27;ve only see it a couple of times in the wild so far but for certain files it can increase the compression ratio quite a bit.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ckolivas&#x2F;lrzip" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ckolivas&#x2F;lrzip</a><p><pre><code>  # 151M    linux-4.14-rc6.tar.gz
  # GZIP decompression
  ~$ time gzip -dk linux-4.14-rc6.tar.gz

  real    0m4.518s
  user    0m3.328s
  sys     0m13.422s

  # 787M    linux-4.14-rc6.tar
  # LRZIP compression
  ~$ time lrzip -v linux-4.14-rc6.tar
  [...]
  linux-4.14-rc6.tar - Compression Ratio: 7.718. Average Compression Speed: 13.789MB&#x2F;s.
  Total time: 00:00:56.37

  real    0m56.533s
  user    5m35.484s
  sys     0m9.422s

  # 137M    linux-4.14-rc6.tar.lrz
  # LRZIP decompression
  ~$ time lrzip -dv linux-4.14-rc6.tar.lrz
  [...]
  100%     786.16 &#x2F;    786.16 MB
  Average DeCompression Speed: 131.000MB&#x2F;s
  Output filename is: linux-4.14-rc6.tar: [OK] - 824350720 bytes
  Total time: 00:00:06.35

  real    0m6.524s
  user    0m8.031s
  sys     0m1.766s

  # Results
  ~$ du -hs linux* | sort -h
  137M    linux-4.14-rc6.tar.lrz
  151M    linux-4.14-rc6.tar.gz
  787M    linux-4.14-rc6.tar

</code></pre>
tested on WSL (Ubuntu BASH for Windows 10)<p>edit:<p><pre><code>  ~$ time xz -vk linux-4.14-rc6.tar
  linux-4.14-rc6.tar (1&#x2F;1)
    100 %        98.9 MiB &#x2F; 786.2 MiB = 0.126   3.0 MiB&#x2F;s       4:25

  real    4m25.189s
  user    4m23.828s
  sys     0m1.094s
  
  ~$ du -hs linux* | sort -h
  99M     linux-4.14-rc6.tar.xz
  137M    linux-4.14-rc6.tar.lrz
  151M    linux-4.14-rc6.tar.gz
  787M    linux-4.14-rc6.tar
</code></pre>
It looks like XZ still has the best compression ratio but also took the longest (real)time.