*.Deb packages : what compression format does it use ??

[Vincent Trouilliez]

I had a look at Gnome's download page :
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/platform/2.10/2.10.0/sources/

and realised that each and every package it is made of, is available in
two formats : tar.gz and tar.bz2.
The .bz2 files are consistently 30% smaller than the .gz files. Or, the
other way around, .gz files are almost 50% bigger than the  .bz2 files,
rather impressive !!!
But Ubuntu can open both files without problems. What is the point of
using .gz format then ? Is it because Gnome is multi-platform, and some
of them can't open .bz2 files ?

That got me thinking.. in the Ubuntu repositories, we have .deb
packages, which are obviously compressed. But what compression format
do .deb packages use ? I was dreaming... if they use .gz, then by
using .bz2 instead, we could download the packages 30% faster, wow ! :o)

Anyone know ??


--
Vince