Compressing packages with bzip2 instead gzip?

[Mikael Eriksson]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 01:08:40PM +1100, Yuki Cuss wrote:
> John C. McCabe-Dansted wrote:
> 
> >On Wednesday 04 January 2006 16:40, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > 
> >
> >>However, we don't currently have support for 7zip in .debs, so among the
> >>available compression methods, bzip2 seems to outperform gzip on the
> >>language packs.
> >>   
> >>
> >
> >One thing to consider before changing to bzip2 is that, e.g. on my p4 1.5 
> >Ghz, it takes about 3sec/MB to decompress a bz2 file. Wide usuage of bz2 
> >files on the official CD could significantly increase the required install 
> >time on older machines.
> >
> Ultimately, you have to make the decision between speed of installation 
> and size of media!

I made some benchmarking of bzip2 -9 and 7zip. And the conclusion was
that 7zip was both faster to unpack and smaller size.