Compression Programs

[Leo J Mauler]

On Sat, 27 Dec 2003 21:29:36 -0600 Jonathan Hutchins
<hutchins at tarcanfel.org> writes:
> My dad sent me some ZIPped JPEG files 
> recently - he got much better compression 
> with WinZip than I did with Linux "zip".  So 
> it got me wondering.  
>
> I used to worry about this kind of thing back 
> in the BBS days, but haven't thought much 
> about it since.

I think that WinZip has been improving the "zip" algorithm and paying for
it by costing money to get rid of the nag screens.

Linux zip is GPLed, so for all we know its a reverse-engineered PkZip
without some of the compression features of the registered shareware
program.

Anyway, bzip2 does get good compression, and they use it these days for
compressed kernel images that are expected to fit on a floppy.  If I'm
going to send a file to someone, I typically use gzip for compatibility,
or UNIX compress if someone asks for it.

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