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A suggestion on distribution

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darklordsatan:
IMHO, 7-zip usually owns bzip2, but the later is also excellent. I just havent make a comparison between the two of them yet, but for general information, from all the "built-in" linux (de)compressing tools, its the best one.

rickg22:
I studied data compression, and bzip uses suffix sorting (very interesting. Search google for PPM compression algorithms and you'll see). I don't know the algorithm for 7-zip, but i suppose it's similar.

In any case, here's some Google info on popularity for the three formats:

about 115,000,000 for zip -"7-zip" -bzip -bzip2
about 2,700,000 for "7-zip" + 377,000 for 7zip
about 933,000 for bzip2 + 236,000 for bzip

See, obviously, ZIP has the advantage in popularity. :. Q.E.D.

kagerato:

--- Quote from: darklordsatan ---I think is not a big secret 7-zip format is the big daddy of compression formats right now...
--- End quote ---


Certainly there are quite a few cases where it offers superior compression (though not necessarily better speed, or speed-to-compression ratio) than other available reduction algorithms.  That statement is especially relevant concerning PKZip because of its age.

However, it is unwise to consider alternatives without actual comparison data.  When one is missing actual figures, it is easy to be lured into the impression of great gains or improvements by generalized statements.  The actual magnitude of difference is rarely as great as proponents would lead you to believe.


--- Quote from: rickg22 ---See, obviously, ZIP has the advantage in popularity. :. Q.E.D.
--- End quote ---


This is accurate, but your google results are skewed in magnitude.  The word zip receives a good deal more results because it has multiple meanings and more potential contexts.  I can practically guarantee that if you sorted through those 115 million results, many of them would show nothing relating to compression.

thomas:
Actually, 7zip does not only compress significantly better and is a LOT faster than bzip (as far as decompression is concerned, compression is really painful, 2-3 times slower sometimes). LZMA, the algorithm used in 7zip is an optimized sliding window compressor, so unlike bzip, decompression does not need to do an awful lot except a few memmoves (no inverse transform calculation etc).

Since you compress once users only decompress, this sounds perfect. However, as stated before, the problem is not one of good technical stats, it is one of availability.
A lot of people will refuse to install a program to decompress the package of another program (and, somehow rightfully, too). To make matters worse, the Windows client coming with 7zip is quite ugly. Not that is doesn't work, it is just ugly.

However, speaking of LZMA and availability... what installer does code::blocks actually use?
NSIS, for example, has transparent support for LZMA built in.

darklordsatan:

--- Quote from: thomas on August 05, 2005, 10:49:46 pm ---what installer does code::blocks actually use?

--- End quote ---
It uses Inno Setup

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