Zstd-Compressed Linux Kernel Images Look Very Close To Mainline With Great Results

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Zstd-Compressed Linux Kernel Images Look Very Close To Mainline With Great Results

The work on Zstd'ing the Linux kernel for using this Facebook-developed Zstandard compression algorithm to in turn speed up decompression times when booting Linux kernel images might be mainlined as soon as Linux 5.9...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zstd-V8-For-Linux-Kernel-Comp

[hotaru]

"If you draw a speed-vs-size graph, at no point bzip2 or lzma are a good choice, while zstd wins by a large margin for most of the range."

only if you limit decompression to a single thread. if you use multiple threads, bzip2 can be quite a bit faster than zstd.

[zxy_thf]

only if you limit decompression to a single thread. if you use multiple threads, bzip2 can be quite a bit faster than zstd.

Where are the multi-threading coming from without an OS kernel?

[curfew]

The work on Zstd'ing the Linux kernel for using this Facebook-developed Zstandard compression algorithm to in turn speed up decompression times when booting Linux kernel images might be mainlined as soon as Linux 5.9.

Why is it so hard to use proper English?

Let's try again:

Developers are making good progress with enabling Zstandard compression with Linux boot images. This would improve boot times through faster decompression process. The patches might get mainlined already by Linux 5.9.

There are countless ways to express the same information in proper English.

[discordian]

only if you limit decompression to a single thread. if you use multiple threads, bzip2 can be quite a bit faster than zstd.

So you can split the file in N chunks and decompress it with zstd in parallel. Its a stupid idea to do in the first place, as compression rate will suffer, and completely useless in this context as you have exactly 1 "thread" at that point.

[discordian]

Btw, anyone know why Arm64 does not support any form of kernel compression? Is that just a lack of effort, or is this a decision to not do this anymore but depend on a bootloader handling compression? (sounds weird, as when using EFI you cant use compressed .gz or whatever files)
Risc V aswell, but this arch is relatively new, Arm64 is around for nearly 10 years....

[uid313]

Why is it so hard to use proper English? This constant gibberish is abuse to Phoronix readers and subscribers especially.

Let's try again:

Developers are making good progress with enabling Zstandard compression with Linux boot images. This would improve boot times through faster decompression process. The patches might get mainlined already by Linux 5.9.

There are countless ways to express the same information in proper English without making the readers feel like they are part of a Nazi torture experiment.

Michael writes the articles all by himself without any other writers to share the load. He publishes thousands of articles a year, the work this man single-handily does is unreal. He is German so English is not his native language.

He has been working for 16 years, every day, all day. No breaks, no vacation. Thousands of articles every year. On weekends too. On mornings, during the day and on the evenings too.

[cl333r]

Why is it so hard to use proper English? This constant gibberish is abuse to Phoronix readers and subscribers especially.

Michael had to read ~600 pages of an inclusive language guide, you can't use proper English after that because you realize it's ra-cist.

There are countless ways to express the same information in proper English without making the readers feel like they are part of a Nazi torture experiment.

No pain no gain, these non-inclusive bastards don't deserve anything better, do they?

[kokoko3k]

Where are the multi-threading coming from without an OS kernel?

What is the "OS kernel" and why Linux itself would not be able to use multithreading to decompress the initramfs?

Also, from the article, what kind of initramfs would take 27 seconds to be unpacked? Do they put the entire Operating System into it?

[Auzy]

Michael writes the articles all by himself without any other writers to share the load. He publishes thousands of articles a year, the work this man single-handily does is unreal. He is German so English is not his native language.

He has been working for 16 years, every day, all day. No breaks, no vacation. Thousands of articles every year. On weekends too. On mornings, during the day and on the evenings too.

And constant abuse too (honestly, I used to complain about the editing in the past, but I've grown to respect the effort he's put in, so my apologies for all the crap I gave him in the past). But even I was never a grammar nazi.

Seriously, people who treat others like crap because of the way they write, probably need to re-evaluate your own life