The Best Compression available

When working with files, especially large files and need to be transfered over the network, one optimization can be done is with the file size. We can compress the file to the smallest size, but how small is small ?

So i look up for some comparison about the file compression to be used in linux system. For usual compression in linux, the compression used was .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 . I prefer use .tar.bz2 because better than .tar.gz .

But you know what, there are other compression that is better which is .rar and .7z .

I look for some data and got the comparison chart. You can see the chart below.

Surely the result is compelling, and look to use .7z . In linux there are 7zip package which called p7zip , in debian linux.

I also tested with my current file, which use bz2, and compress it using 7z, I got around 20Mb - 100 Mb more disk space with 7z compression, even with mp4 video files.

So more disk space left for storage when using 7z compression. No worries with the compatibility, because 7zip also available in any Operating System like linux, windows, MacOS.

Here are some how to use 7z compression.

To install :

$ sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

To compress :

$ 7za a big-bang-theory.7z  big-bang-theory/

To test compression :

$ 7za t big-bang-theory.7z

To uncompress :

$ 7za x big-bang-theory.7z

So happy Compressing.

Posted in: Compression,Debian