this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] kbal@fedia.io 26 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The .tar.xz format decompresses more than twice as fast as .tar.bz2, allowing you to get up and running in no time

$ time tar xjf firefox-134.0b3.tar.bz2 

real    0m9.045s
user    0m8.839s
sys     0m0.450s

$ time tar xJf firefox-135.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.xz                                                

real    0m4.903s
user    0m4.677s
sys     0m0.510s

Nice! Presumably it'd be twice as fast if disk was infinitely fast or something. Unfortunately by testing this I've already used up a hundred times more time than I'll ever save as a result of it.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I am curious too. You tested two different versions, one beta and the other current nightly (different content). It's okay for a quick test, but you can actually have a much closer test. Both nightly and only one day difference:

I run this quick test multiple times and on average these are typical results (don't forget to delete the unpacked folder between each runs):

$ time tar xjf firefox-135.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

real    0m5,784s
user    0m5,700s
sys     0m0,371s

$ time tar xJf firefox-135.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.xz

real    0m1,699s
user    0m1,621s
sys     0m0,315s
[–] kbal@fedia.io 1 points 3 days ago

On my system that consistently gets results around 10s and 5s so the difference is sort of interesting. Mine's a Ryzen 3600, maybe newer CPU features are of substantial benefit to xz.