gzip vs. bzip2 vs. pbzip2 vs. xz vs. lzma
Yes, another benchmark. And yes, YMMV - big time:
$ ls -lh file.tar -rw-r--r-- 1 bob bob 80M May 27 12:36 file.tar $ compress-test.sh file.tar ### gzip/9c: 6 seconds / 48.700% smaller ### bzip2/9c: 44 seconds / 50.300% smaller ### pbzip2/9c: 22 seconds / 50.200% smaller ### xz/9c: 79 seconds / 53.400% smaller ### lzma/9c: 120 seconds / 53.200% smaller ### gzip/1c: 4 seconds / 46.200% smaller ### bzip2/1c: 30 seconds / 48.100% smaller ### pbzip2/1c: 15 seconds / 48.000% smaller ### xz/1c: 35 seconds / 51.100% smaller ### lzma/1c: 18 seconds / 49.700% smaller ### gzip/dc: 0 seconds ### bzip2/dc: 7 seconds ### pbzip2/dc: 4 seconds ### xz/dc: 4 seconds ### lzma/dc: 5 secondsVersions used: