bzip2 is the compression algorithm equivalent of that one coworker who does incredible work but nobody ever talks about. meanwhile gzip gets all the credit because it's "good enough"
kergonath•11m ago
Bzip2 is slow. That’s the main issue. Gzip is good enough and much faster. Also, the fact that you cannot get a valid bzip2 file by cat-ing 2 compressed files is not a deal breaker, but it is annoying.
saidnooneever•3m ago
the catting issue might be more an implementation of bzip program problem than algorithm (it could expect an array of compressed files). that would only be impossible if the program cannot reason about the length of data from file header, which again is technically not something about compression algo but rather file format its carried through.
that being said, speed is important for compression so for systems like webservers etc its an easy sell ofc. very strong point (and smarter implementation in programs) for gzip
joecool1029•4m ago
Just use zstd unless you absolutely need to save a tiny bit more space. bzip2 and xz are extremely slow to compress.
elophanto_agent•33m ago
kergonath•11m ago
saidnooneever•3m ago
that being said, speed is important for compression so for systems like webservers etc its an easy sell ofc. very strong point (and smarter implementation in programs) for gzip