On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 20:09, Gaetan Bisson <bisson@archlinux.org> wrote:
[2011-03-16 19:58:23 +0530] KESHAV P.R.:
Now that kernel 2.6.38 supports xz (lzma2, not lzma), how about using it as the default compression for the kernel and initramfs. mkinitcpio simply requires COMPRESSION="xz" to generate lzma2 compressed initramfs. But xz compressed kernel requires change in the config option and once module-init-toools supports xz compressed modules we can say good bye to gzip.
Since XZ decompresses much more slowly than GZIP, this does not seem like a good idea unless it is backed up by figures showing that the space gain is really worth it.
I don't think with the present processors the decompression speed is a big deal. But anyway the testing kernel already has xz enabled and is the default now ( http://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/commit/kernel26/trunk/co... ) . Still i think this discussion is relevant when it comes to initramfs and compressed kernel modules. Damn, the devs are fast. - Keshav