Re: beta3

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> If I'd downloaded this thing over a decent DSL or cable modem 
> line, bzip2 would actually be a net loss in total 
> download + uncompress time.

I think the download time is a lot more important to people than 
the uncompression time. A savings of nearly 1.5 Megs is 
significant, no matter what type of line you are on. If we can 
shave off 1.5M for a 56K user, why not?

My runtime tests were also different:

bzip -9: 8.959 real
bzip -1: 7.473 real
gzip -9: 1.491 real

That's not much of a difference, and (IMO) is more than offset 
by the smaller download size. Bandwidth should be a more 
important factor: after all, the next few steps (tar, 
configure, make) are going to make the unzipping seem fast 
in comparison. :)

I'm not advocating *replacing* gzip with bzip2, but I do think 
we should make it an option. It should not be that much 
trouble.

Digital signatures, on the other hand, are a lot more trouble 
but are much more important than the gzip/bzip2 issue....


Greg Sabino Mullane
greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200111201606

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