Proposal for solving CD Size problems

[Phillip Lougher]

On 9/29/06, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky <tuharsky at misbb.sk> wrote:
> Well,
>
> it has been said that Knoppix uses the gzip already and has been using
> lzma before. How did the guys make it work, if it is such a bad deal as
> many post here?

Knoppix (or more correctly the cloop compressed block layer used by
Knoppix) doesn't use LZMA.  The 7zip library which contains LZMA also
has a gzip implementation which produces slightly better compression
than the usual zlib library.  This data can be decompressed using the
zlib inflator in the Linux kernel without any speed penalty.   Knoppix
uses this to achieve about 1 - 2% better compression.

>
> Let's learn from them and don't reinvent the wheel, I suggest.
>

Squashfs produces the highest compression and is the fastest
compressed filesystem available for Linux (see the link I posted
previously if you need to be convinced).  While the majority of
LiveCDs have moved over from Cloop/Zisofs to Squashfs, Knoppix hasn't.
 This is their loss.

The debate was whether to use lzma compression in Squashfs. I don't
believe it is a good thing.  Rather than moving over to lzma
compression, it is obvious Klaus Knopper when hitting size constraints
decided to produce both a CD and a DVD "Maxi" edition.

Phillip