LZMA Utils
- Average compression ratio of LZMA is about 30% better than that of gzip, and 15% better than that of bzip2.
- Decompression speed is only little slower than that of gzip, being two to five times faster than bzip2.
- In fast mode, compresses faster than bzip2 with a comparable compression ratio.
- Achieving the best compression ratios takes four to even twelve times longer than with bzip2. However. this doesn't affect decompressing speed.
- Very similar command line interface than what gzip and bzip2 have.
- The patch for GNU tar integrates LZMA compression with the tar command in the same way as with gzip and bzip2.
- Free software licensed under the GNU GPL (actually most parts are under the GNU LGPL).
Current state of the development
In January 2006 there was a plan to finalize 4.32.0beta1 quickly to a stable release. But motivation to work on code, which would soon get dumped, was low. Work on new code base began:
- New header format: adds magic bytes, filter support and CRC32
- liblzma: written in C, has zlib-like API, supports filters and both old and new header formats
- New command line tool: similar to the one included in 4.32.0beta1, but now written in C; allows finetuning all the compression settings like the original "lzma" from LZMA SDK
- License: GNU LGPL (liblzma) and GNU GPL (rest)
The schedule for next major release is currently unknown. For now, stick to LZMA Utils 4.32.x or latest LZMA SDK.