Linux Kernel Source Compression

Justin Piszcz
2006-05-21T14:35:03Z

Was curious as to which utilities would offer the best compression ratio
for the kernel source, I thought it'd be bzip2 or rar but lzma wins,
roughly 6 MiB smaller than bzip2.

$ du -sk * | sort -n
33520 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.lzma
33760 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.rar
38064 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.rz
39472 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.szip
39520 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.bz
39936 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.bz2
40000 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.bicom
40656 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.sit
47664 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.lha
49968 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.dzip
50000 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.gz
51344 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.arj
57552 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.lzo
57984 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.F
81136 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.Z
94544 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.zoo
101216 linux-2.6.16.17.tar.arc
228608 linux-2.6.16.17.tar

$ du -sh * | sort -n
33M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.lzma
33M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.rar
37M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.rz
39M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.bicom
39M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.bz
39M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.bz2
39M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.szip
40M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.sit
47M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.lha
49M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.dzip
49M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.gz
50M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.arj
56M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.lzo
57M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.F
79M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.Z
92M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.zoo
99M linux-2.6.16.17.tar.arc
223M linux-2.6.16.17.tar