Compression Algorithm of Choice?

[coldfiredragon]

So what is your flavor of choice?

Deflate/Deflate 64 (Multiple, Most Commonly Zip)
LZSS (RAR)
LZMA (7Zip, Recent Addtion to Zip)
BZip2 (Multiple)
PPMd (Multiple)

For me its Zip with Deflate, I like to not worry about the recipiant needing the right archiver or right version to extract the files, even if the compression ratio suffers.

[Deleted]

I prefer rar... Zip sounds sooo 90's

[vesseblah]

Rather obvious one. LZMA preforms best in both mixed data and media and 7zip is totally free unlike WinZip or WinRAR so what's there to debate? Anyway most people apart from developers aren't really choosing between compression algorthms but frontends so the question is bit... weird.

7z always for own use, plain old zip for computer illiterate friends who can open it from plain vanilla windows without anything installed.

[souka]

I prefer rar... Zip sounds sooo 90's

yeah. and what about 7-zip, tar?

[Sackman]

Rar, but only because half the stuff I ever need is in Rar.

If it wasn't it would be .7z because it is powerful and easily distributed

[vesseblah]

Rar, but only because half the stuff I ever need is in Rar.

7zip can also extract all those 14.4mb or 50mb RAR slices *wink wink*

[lockblock]

been a fan of rar for the longest time used it since the dialup days in the late 90s before cable was avail.

[vesseblah]

been a fan of rar for the longest time used it since the dialup days in the late 90s before cable was avail.

I was too, back then. But 7zip is free (unlike RAR) and does smaller packets, so there's really no point in not switching.

[Beace]

I remember the days when ARJ was the hot thing.

But on topic, I've been using RAR for the last 10-12 years or so. If I cared enough about it, I'd probably switch to 7z, but with today's storage spaces and internet connections, it just feels like it doesn't matter much.

[Jurwi]

LZMA, because I've actually bothered doing some research on the performance of these algorithms. That is those 3 times a year when I actually have a need to compress something.

[Deleted]

For development, i always stick with .zip, simply because XP and above can open it by default. I honestly don't really care of saving space, more that files are contained in something that's easily transferrable.

Pretty much going to have to agree with this. Not that saving space isn't sometimes useful, but more often than not I find that you want to make opening your packages easy - and .zip is the only real way to assure that.

This compatibility also extends to a lot of other software, which can search, index, and investigate the contents of ZIP files - but can't do so for anything else. (Check your virus scanner for example)

[Keller]

Tarballs or .ZIP as they can be opened by pretty much everything.