OpenMandriva Is The Latest Linux Distribution Using Zstd To Compress Packages

Similar to Fedora's move last year to compress RPMs with Zstd rather than XZ for much faster decompression speeds and a better compression ratio at the highest level, OpenMandriva has now enacted a similar change.

This OpenMandriva change also comes just days after Arch Linux switched to Zstd for a ~1300% speedup in total decompression time, among other Linux distributions as well switching to Zstandard for either offering a comparable compression ratio to existing algorithms or better, depending upon the compression level utilized. But the big win in switching the packaging to Zstd compression is the significantly faster decompression times.

With the OpenMandriva switch RPMs are no longer compressed using XZ but using Zstd at the highest compression level of 19. Besides using Zstd on RPMs, the distribution also uses this Facebook-developed compression algorithm for its SquashFS install media, initrd, and kernel image.

OpenMandriva shared more details on their Facebook.