Ubuntu 23.10 Is Maxing Out Zstd Compression For Its Kernel Build

[reba]

I'm just interested in the best end-user-experience. All your points are ideological.

If you want to know what a real lock-in is, you should take a look at your phone. And that's where you should start your criticism.

Well, I own a FairPhone and use F-Droid.

[anth]

In other news the Ubuntu mainline kernel packages are being built again after a 5 week gap. I wonder if this is related.

[Kenta_Hirono]

When installing, the module files and firmware files were installed uncompressed into the filesystem. Then when you install a new kernel, it will generate an initrd for that kernel by taking a subset of the modules and firmware files, and then compress the initrd with zstd.

IDK but as I know I have only zstd compressed firmwares installed into my kubuntu 23.10.

[StarterX4]

Lmao. Now it's not just the initrd generation taking ages with their max compression, now it's also kernel updates (package installation).

Imagine having a not-customized Ubuntu on some legacy hardware, or just Server on Free-tier Oracle Cloud, or Amazon T2.Small/Micro.
Setting initramfs compression to LZO is must-be.

They would better optimize their kernels, or provide one for x86_64-v3, maybe even with ZEN or ClearLinux patches.

[shmerl]

Meanwhile, can Debain already enable zstd for packages for faster decompression? I don't think they ever did.

[jabl]

Meanwhile, can Debain already enable zstd for packages for faster decompression? I don't think they ever did.

Support was added to upstream dpkg 1.21.18 per https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...cgi?bug=892664 and the latest stable, Debian 12, ships with dpkg version 1.21.22 https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/dpkg

Now Debian doesn't do archive-wide rebuilds, so I guess it'll take a while for actual zstd usage to propagate into the archive. Not sure whether this is something each individual package must opt-in to, or if the defaults will be changed to use zstd.

[shmerl]

Support was added to upstream dpkg 1.21.18 per https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...cgi?bug=892664 and the latest stable, Debian 12, ships with dpkg version 1.21.22 https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/dpkg

Now Debian doesn't do archive-wide rebuilds, so I guess it'll take a while for actual zstd usage to propagate into the archive. Not sure whether this is something each individual package must opt-in to, or if the defaults will be changed to use zstd.

Not sure either, but support for it doesn't help if it's not enabled in actual packages. Versions are bumped over time, but decompression still feels pretty slow. They should just change the default for the whole archive and be done beating around the bush.

[jabl]

Hopefully, they will work on getting the changes they have made upstreamed... It doesn't look like these are large patches...

AFAIU it's all upstreamed already, it's just a change in the Ubuntu configuration how they create the packages. Based on some quick googling, zstd compressed kernel modules have been supported since 5.13, and zstd compressed firmware images have been supported since kernel 5.19.

[jabl]

Not sure either, but support for it doesn't help if it's not enabled in actual packages. Versions are bumped over time, but decompression still feels pretty slow. They should just change the default for the whole archive and be done beating around the bush.

I found this thread where someone proposed changing the default from xz to zstd: https://lists.debian.org/debian-deve.../msg00200.html

Seems the consensus from that thread is that they don't want that, as the space advantages of xz helps mirrors and BW.

[tenplus1]

I'm happy to hear that Canonical are working on lowering memory use since the system requirements to run most Ubuntu flavours shot up from 22.04 to 23.04 by an average of 350MB.