Arch Linux Developers , they have changed the package compression scheme. Previously, the xz algorithm (.pkg.tar.xz) was used. Now, zstd (.pkg.tar.zst) is employed. This has increased the extraction speed by 1300% at the cost of a slight increase in the size of the packages themselves (about 0.8%). This will expedite the process of installing and updating packages in the system.
Currently, there are talks about transitioning 545 packages to zstd. The rest will gradually receive the new compression algorithm as updates are released. It's important to note that packages in the .pkg.tar.zst format are automatically supported with updates to pacman (5.2) and libarchive (3.3.3-1). If any users have not yet updated libarchive, the new version is available in a separate repository.
The zstd (zstandard) algorithm was developed in 2015 and first presented a year later. It provides lossless compression and is aimed at achieving higher compression and decompression speeds than usual. At the same time, the compression ratio should be comparable to or exceed existing solutions. It is noted that zstd version 0.6 showed results comparable to boz, yxz, and tornado at maximum compression levels, while outperforming lza, brotli, and bzip2.
Source: 3dnews.ru
