XZ provides very high compression ratio and fast decompression. The
core of the XZ utils is Igor Pavlov's LZMA SDK containing the actual
LZMA encoder/decoder. LZMA utils add a few scripts which provide
gzip-like command line interface and a couple of other XZ related
tools. Also provides:
- Average compression ratio 30% better than that of gzip and 15%
better than that of bzip2.
- Decompression speed is only little slower than that of gzip, being
two to five times faster than bzip2.
- In fast mode, compresses faster than bzip2 with a comparable
compression ratio.
- Achieving the best compression ratios takes four to even twelve
times longer than with bzip2. However, this doesn't affect
decompressing speed.
- Very similar command line interface than what gzip and bzip2 have.