Linux EFI Zboot Abandoning "Compression Library Museum", Focusing On Gzip & Zstd

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux EFI Zboot Abandoning "Compression Library Museum", Focusing On Gzip & Zstd

The Linux kernel EFI Zboot code for carrying the Linux kernel image for EFI systems in compressed form is doing away with its "compression library museum" of offering Gzip, LZ4, LZMA, LZO, XZ, and Zstd compression options to instead just focus on Gzip and Zstd compression support...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-EFI-Zboot-Gzip-Zstd

[geerge]

So, xz is getting dropped?

[TiCPU]

So, xz is getting dropped?

No. Xz is getting URGENTLY dropped 😆

[skeevy420]

WTF!? When I compress my images I use LZ4. It's the KISS of fast CODEC.

[gotar]

Dropping LZMA and XZ is clear, also LZO has no benefits over LZ4, but what about the LZ4?

[milkylainen]

Seems kinda excessive. I would remove one of LZO/LZ4 and one of XZ/LZMA.
While ZSTD does cover a whole lot more than any single other compression algorithm, I don't see the need to remove them all.
I would hardly call all of them "museum". If anything, gzip is the museum piece here.

[V1tol]

WTF!? When I compress my images I use LZ4. It's the KISS of fast CODEC.

It's a great opportunity to become LZ4 maintainer in the kernel then

Seems kinda excessive. I would remove one of LZO/LZ4 and one of XZ/LZMA.
While ZSTD does cover a whole lot more than any single other compression algorithm, I don't see the need to remove them all.
I would hardly call all of them "museum". If anything, gzip is the museum piece here.

"Museum" here is about an "amount of exhibits" not about "old and outdated". They decided to use "one tested, popular and stable" and "one modern best" solution, that's how it should be read.

[ahrs]

WTF!? When I compress my images I use LZ4. It's the KISS of fast CODEC.

I too use LZ4 because it's the fastest to decompress. Zstd should perform similarly at low compression levels though as far I know. I would like to see tunables for this. There should be a ZSTD config that behaves like Xz and one that behaves like LZ4.

[NateHubbard]

It's a shame that they can't just get rid of gzip as well. Anywhere running a new kernel should be running new (or at least not extremely old) everything else, right?

[stormcrow]

I was going to complain about removing LZ4 because it's extensively used in embedded kit. Then I remembered that almost no embedded solutions use UEFI for a boot standard and for the most part any other system isn't going to notice the difference for the one time cost of decompression on boot. It doesn't stop people from using the highly performant LZ4 elsewhere (like ZFS). This only affects EFI zboot, nothing else.