bzip2
bzip2 is an open-source compression tool and format created by Julian Seward, using a BWT, MTF, RLE, Huffman pipeline; it compresses better than gzip but is slower.
Purpose
It delivers compression ratios above gzip where slower speed is acceptable, and is widely used for Linux packages and archives.
Mechanism
The input is blocked (900KB), then passed through BWT, MTF, RLE, and Huffman entropy coding, with block headers and CRC checksums appended. Decompression runs the stages in reverse.
Use cases
- Linux source packages
- High-ratio archiving
- Text data compression