Re: Bug#160928: ITP: 7zip -- 7zip is file compressor which can handle many archive formats
On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, Ian Eure wrote:
> On Tuesday 17 September 2002 10:18 am, Craig Dickson wrote:
> > Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > > RAR actually is a decent format.
> >
> > Quite possibly; I wasn't commenting on the format as such. In fact, I
> > assume if it wasn't better than .zip, it would never have achieved any
> > notice at all, so in all likelihood it is somewhat better. I was just
> > responding to the comment that it is popular among warez traders.
> >
> > The worst thing I would say about the various alternative archive
> > formats (.rar, .zoo, .arj, etc.) is that none of them have been so much
> > better than .zip that they provided a compelling argument to switch.
> > People who are in the habit of transferring large files across slow to
> > moderate-speed connections (such as, again, warez traders) will
> > understandably take the smallest size they can get, but it seems that
> > most people find .zip (and .tar.(gz|bz2)) adequate for their needs.
> >
> RAR is actually more popular for it's built-in archive splitting/joining
> feature then anything else. IIRC, it does get slightly better compression
> than zip, but nothing to write home about.
>
> Combining RAR's multi-part archive feature with e.g. parchive provides a nice
> way of transferring large amounts of data over not-so-reliable networks.
> Sure, this is used for warez kiddies, but it could be useful for e.g. Debian
> CDs.
>
Check out the information available at http://www.compression.ca and
you'll see that rar can be significantly better than zip as it can do
solid archives. You should also note that there are many other archivers
that have better compression than rar and many that have similar features.
Rar has been around and had it's features for a long time and thus it has
become popular with people who deal with large sets of data on a regular
basis. Ace for similar reasons has become somewhat popular too. Personally
I'm a fan of prediction by partial match (ppm) algorithms which are in the
top archivers. They're resource intensive, but get better compression
ratios. I mentioned a bit about compression in my post about my "Debian
(would like) to do list".
As far as using rar for distribution of Debian archives, I think there are
better alternatives. There are many arguments against switching from gzip,
now that bzip2 is becoming accepted, I doubt that people will want to
switch from it (despite the author's claims that bzip2 is suboptimal for
compression).
Drew Daniels
I'm looking for work. My resume is at:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umdanie8/resume.html
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