Here are some (totally unscientific[1]) tests showing how well lzip can replace gzip and bzip2 for software distribution and data archiving. Times are measured compressing or decompressing from RAM to /dev/null on an idle machine and taking the best of three trials. The compressors tested are: gzip-1.4 bzip2-1.0.6 lzip-1.14 The files tested are: gmp-5.0.1.tar icecat-3.5.3-x86.tar libtool-2.2.6a.tar linux-2.6.32-libre.tar solfege-3.14.6.tar tar-1.26.tar Gzip decompresses faster than lzip, but note that lzip decompression speeds up with compression ratio and that lzip decompression is fast enough that when writing the decompressed data to disc the total time difference is greatly reduced or even inverted: $ ls -l linux-2.6.32-libre.tar* -rw-r--r-- 1 antonio users 375439360 Dec 11 2009 linux-2.6.32-libre.tar -rw-r--r-- 1 antonio users 79806218 Dec 11 2009 linux-2.6.32-libre.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 antonio users 51733042 Dec 11 2009 linux-2.6.32-libre.tar.lz $ time tar -xf linux-2.6.32-libre.tar.gz real 2m44.589s user 0m3.750s sys 0m2.560s $ time tar -xf linux-2.6.32-libre.tar.lz real 2m43.313s user 0m7.920s sys 0m2.510s The following table shows that "lzip -0" and "gzip -9" are comparable both on compression ratio and compression speed. ----------------------------- GZIP vs LZIP ---------------------------- file gmp icecat libtool linux solfege tar size 12687360 32419840 13137920 375439360 15964160 14899200 gzip -9 size 2632726 12041750 2870543 79806218 3561393 3435293 time 1.258s 8.978s 1.190s 39.506s 1.741s 1.712s time -d 0.111s 0.415s 0.119s 3.323s 0.124s 0.140s lzip -0 size 2599402 11222957 2877427 78744333 3318512 3209660 time 1.000s 3.839s 1.053s 29.555s 1.327s 1.202s time -d 0.319s 1.396s 0.347s 9.583s 0.436s 0.391s Bzip2, having an algorithm very different from those of gzip and lzip, is more difficult to match. "lzip -3" seems to be the closest replacement for "bzip2 -9", even if variations between the two are notable. On decompression lzip is the clear winner, being about 3 times faster than bzip2. ---------------------------- BZIP2 vs LZIP ---------------------------- file gmp icecat libtool linux solfege tar size 12687360 32419840 13137920 375439360 15964160 14899200 bzip2 -9 size 2006109 11162963 1954787 62634375 3047512 2339773 time 3.811s 9.765s 4.261s 1m48s 10.302s 4.762s time -d 0.792s 2.836s 0.857s 23.838s 0.951s 0.984s lzip -3 size 2063358 10068218 1027298 67604216 2807737 2322567 time 3.491s 16.476s 3.155s 1m51s 3.451s 4.140s time -d 0.253s 1.231s 0.156s 8.043s 0.383s 0.292s ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lzip goes beyond gzip and bzip2 on compression ratio. Here is the complete range of compressed sizes produced from the files above. file gmp icecat libtool linux solfege tar size 12687360 32419840 13137920 375439360 15964160 14899200 gzip -9 2632726 12041750 2870543 79806218 3561393 3435293 bzip2 -9 2006109 11162963 1954787 62634375 3047512 2339773 lzip -0 2599402 11222957 2877427 78744333 3318512 3209660 lzip -1 2393011 10877667 1351465 76762097 2971428 2740358 lzip -2 2253986 10526086 1176304 72615342 2899161 2569115 lzip -3 2063358 10068218 1027298 67604216 2807737 2322567 lzip -4 1877289 9589977 860431 62126949 2758765 2041404 lzip -5 1748503 9318646 797698 57415299 2626472 1900125 lzip -6 1679361 9115641 755398 54252857 2586596 1808604 lzip -7 1654540 9056394 739808 52624594 2486091 1746493 lzip -8 1645234 8991343 735450 51930837 2474093 1729594 lzip -9 1643117 8988852 733373 51590547 2471349 1717163 [1] Paraphrasing John von Neumann, there's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what kind of hardware or compiler will use the person reading this. But in case you need a reference, this test was run on an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ running in 32 bit mode, and lzip was compiled out of the box with gcc-4.7.2. Copyright (C) 2013 Antonio Diaz Diaz. You are free to copy, modify and distribute all or part of this article without limitation. Updated: 2013/03/01