You
gzip, zstd or xz for archives I keep for years?
ChatGPT
The tradeoff in one table:
| gzip | zstd | xz | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compression | baseline | better | best |
| Speed | fast | fastest | slow |
| Decompress | fast | fastest | moderate |
| Ubiquity | everywhere | recent | common |
For long-term archives the deciding factor is not ratio but whether the format opens without installing anything in ten years, which still favours gzip for the outer layer.
You
How do I know when it stops being worth it?
ChatGPT
When you stop noticing it. If it has not surfaced a problem in six months, it is either solved or it was never the bottleneck you thought.