KDE3.4 to have p7zip maybe useful in DSL

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: KDE3.4 to have p7zip maybe useful in DSL
started by: muzak24h

Posted by muzak24h on Jan. 15 2005,21:33

Has anyone heard of 7-zip compression? It's been on win boxes since Nov, 2000 with some hot debates and linux port attempts over the last 2 years on Sourceforge. Jan 1st, Henrique Pinto (KDE project) posted that he will include it with KDE 3.4 in March. My experience is that it's a fast decompressor and a little slow packing (1Mb/s on a P4 2Ghz).
So my suggestion is "can it unpack things at boot that we've always wanted to in a 50meg distro?"

Other info: < http://p7zip.sourceforge.net >
*Debian has the penultimate package listed as experimental:
< http://packages.debian.org/experimental/utils/p7zip >
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7zip >

Posted by mikshaw on Jan. 15 2005,22:12

I'm not sure it would have much effect on the DSL system as a whole, since it's a file compression rather than a filesystem compression, but it would be useful for extensions and archives.
What I really like is the support for multiple formats including rar, which in linux has been limited to commercial software as far as the compression stage goes. This is assuming 'support' means it can create rar files, but I may be mistaken.

//EDIT
This is mainly for John and Robert:
This thread reminded me of something I've been meaning to ask RobertS....

I'm assuming that permissions and ownership in myDSL extensions are handled in the 'tar' stage, and gzip merely compresses it. So my question is "Can bzip2 (or p7zip) compression be added to the mydsl-install script?" This change doesn't make much difference in smaller extensions, but something like gimp, which is quite large, can be reduced by a megabyte or two with bz2...at least as far as the downloaded file is concerned. Since DSL already has bz2, maybe extensions could benefit from this.

Posted by muzak24h on Jan. 15 2005,22:38

Quote (mikshaw @ Jan. 15 2005,17:12)

Yes, RAR-out would be nice, but it cannot support it now, nor in the forseeable future as RAR is somewhat closed.

I see it more as a GNU enemy! (pun intended). Since CPU speed and memory are more abundant, 7zip may soon gain acceptance over RAR since it has no legal chains.

Posted by l0st on Jan. 16 2005,05:38

Now speaking of KDE....
This recent < Slashdot Story > outlines the Klik-and-Run software that was made for Knoppix, but now extended to almost all debian systems (and some other too!)
After looking through their repository, all I have to say is WOW! They have a monster collection of "one click install / uninstall" software that dwarves our little myDSL collection; everything including the kitchen sink is in there.
Wouldn't it be cool if DSL was modified (a bit) to support this? I'm not saying to replace the current mydsl system, but the .cmg files there work similarly to our .uci file, so I believe both systems can exist on the same system. :cool:

Posted by muzak24h on Jan. 16 2005,14:51

What about moving things out of the 49meg KNOPPIX file to a p7z file (with 30% better compression)? I'm talking about things not needed to boot, waiting till the last stages... Like take for example a filled-out Firefox? On an average machine, it might add 2 to 5 seconds of boot time, but it would be worth it.

As I see it, this compressor would eat 450k, but what normally would have used (say 25mB) inside the cloop file, would then use 15meg, giving DSL at least another 15meg (unpacked) to dream.

Posted by TyphoonMentat on Jan. 16 2005,20:16

The current cloop compressor uses 7-zip anyway as far as I'm aware. Try using the "-b" flag with create_compressed_fs, and look at the last few lines of output - you should see mentions of 7-zip compression.

Posted by muzak24h on Jan. 17 2005,03:39

Quote (TyphoonMentat @ Jan. 16 2005,15:16)

The current cloop compressor uses 7-zip...

Yup, I saw the code just now in 2.x versions.. seems it's closer to the end of the envelope than I thought - I'll go cry now.