Compression utilities comparison
There is many compression software and algorithms available today. Many people are still using zip (the oldie but goodie) while many others are cult of RAR. In UNIX, the gzip is the classic and widely used compression program, but bzip2 seems to have many fans either. Mac users are still using StuffIt since I guess they have no more choice! (Correct me if I am wrong please)
You are also using your favorite compression program with your very own custom settings perhaps, which fit the best for your needs.
Everything that we know about our favorite compression program is that it “feels” faster or “probably” makes smaller archives. But have you ever tested different programs yourself to compare them? I did.
How?
The test bench is my personal computer at home, running FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT on Intel 1.7 GHz CPU with 512K L2 Cache and 512MB DDR memory. My OS is completely rebuilt using gcc with
