Grml Blog

Debian based Linux Live system

grml-live: ZLIB vs. LZMA

I just made some benchmarks between ZLIB and LZMA compression at squashfs, thanks to grml-live (which provides a commandline option and config option for switching) that’s a trivial task now:

  • grml flavour: grml-medium
  • using LZMA: 164MB ISO, build time 725 seconds
  • using ZLIB: 183MB ISO, build time 254 seconds

So whereas the build time increases the benefit is a smaller ISO, which is quite important for live systems that want to ship as many useful tools as possible. :-)