Modernized Zstd Merged Into Linux 5.16 For Much Greater Performance

[geearf]

Good to know, but just as a warning that the compression gains only apply to some of the compression levels and are also only minor. He mentioned F2FS so I am assuming he is using an SSD. I would then not rewrite/defragment the files when these are stored on an SSD, because it shortens the SSD's lifespan. Better to let the distro update the files under root "naturally" little by little.

I wouldn't worry about shortening the life of any newish SSD, I'm sure they'll be trashed way before they get there.
Having written that, defrag and co may be why my 2nd SSD died abruptly, but that was almost a decade ago...

[skeevy420]

... And in-kernel Zstd compression happens to be the topic of the article. I only answered rmfx's question with regards to the article and who also already knew some of the differences himself. There was no further need for me to create tangents of what-ifs and did-you-know, when two previous comments explained much of the wider details already. Sorry if you expected to get a wall of text from me.

I was just pointing out that the kernel's Zstd limitations aren't Zstd's actual limitations and, how unlike a few comments here speculate, that it could perform just as well or better than LZ4 provided the kernel, BTRFS, F2FS, ZRam\Swap, etc had better Zstd tuning knobs and that some of those knobs exist in OpenZFS if one wanted to actually try it out. I'd expect that more Zstd features will be available to the kernel and file systems eventually since part of the commit message is

3. Zstd-1.4.10 supports negative compression levels, which allow zstd to match or subsume lzo's performance.

Thanks, Nick and Linus and everyone else.

peterdk @rmfx

I meant to add yesterday that the reason a lot of us are so hyped about Zstd is because we finally have a compressor that really follows the UNIX philosophies of

• Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
• Write programs to work together.

Now we don't need XZ, LZMA, LZ4, GZip, and more to fill roles like "as fast as possible", "as compressed as possible", "balanced for real-time usage", "tuned for a database". Zstd and its various knobs fills all of those roles and does it in a way that everything works well together thanks to an effort to maintain backwards compatibility. I recommend that everyone play with Zstd from the terminal as well as read the -h and man. I almost guarantee you'll come across a feature and think, "Wow, I didn't realize it could do that too!".

[sdack]

I wouldn't worry about shortening the life of any newish SSD, I'm sure they'll be trashed way before they get there.
Having written that, defrag and co may be why my 2nd SSD died abruptly, but that was almost a decade ago...

When you take good care of your SSDs then you can expect to get a long life span from them. If you do not then it will bite you back correspondingly. SSDs deteriorate not linear as one might think, but exponentially, with heat and writes. So keeping it cool and choosing the right filesystem, mount and kernel options pays off and should not be underestimated.

[geearf]

When you take good care of your SSDs then you can expect to get a long life span from them. If you do not then it will bite you back correspondingly. SSDs deteriorate not linear as one might think, but exponentially, with heat and writes. So keeping it cool and choosing the right filesystem, mount and kernel options pays off and should not be underestimated.

Meh, I'm already on my 3rd generation of SSD, I don't think I need a long lifespan for these things as I replace them somewhat frequently, more often than my HDDs I guess.

[Quackdoc]

On eBay there are laptops for under $200 which are way higher spec than your current laptop. You should be able to get 8gb ram, at least a 256gb SSD and a much better processor for that amount.

Unfortunately upgrading for me is not an options, or trust me I would. I simply don't have money to upgrade right now, and with prices in my area on a rocket to the moon, I probably won't have money for a long time.

[Quackdoc]

Which laptop is that if I may ask?

Lenovo N22, it's essentially a chromebook, except mine was a windows version,

[phuclv]

SquasFS Zstd decompression is around ~15% faster too

typo: SquasFS => SquashFS