This topic seems to be rather popular. But if you look at the relations of files size, this seems natural.
Waldo has absolutely right, in my eyes. Setting up a build environment is as 10 times more difficult than installing 7zip. So at least the src-distr. isn't required any more as zip (since src needs buildenv). So I as the one who packs and uploads the stuff decided, that the src-package will only be distributed as .7z rather than .zip. For the other packages (esp. qemu) I don't know. I think that will have both. At least for my part I am a canny guy. And if I can save bits/s and MB on sf.net's and other's hard disks, I think that's good. So I would save these bits. HDs are cheap but what tells us to be dissipative. So I rather invest some CPU cycles to save many MB(/s).
Other opinion? Let's read it.
Waldo Alvarez Cañizares wrote:
Hi:
I doubt normal Windows users will be downloading sources of anything ever. BTW is a lot more dificult to set the build environment than to decompress the sources using 7zip. Beleiveme is a real pain to download ROS if you have a dialup connection. Why waste our time when we don't need to. Again if still you consider that a zip distribution should still be available for download why not distribute both zip and 7zip. Is that much space? Or it takes to much time to pack? I would answer no to both questions.
Regards Waldo
-----Original Message----- From: ros-dev-bounces@reactos.com on behalf of Andrew Flynn Sent: Thu 4/14/2005 4:28 AM To: ReactOS Development List Subject: Re: [ros-dev] 7-zip - holy smokes!
I agree with Michael B. 7Zip is superior to ZIP. You have to remember who will be downloading the source, compressed files. Is it going to be standard windows users that use winzip and nothing else? When it comes to mass distribution of images, the iso format seems like a sensible choice, where the setup programs can utilise whatever compression they like. PKZip may be the most popular, but that does not mean that ReactOS files have to use it.
Michael B. Trausch wrote:
Thomas Weidenmueller wrote:
I don't think it's a good choice for our public downloads, the avarage user most likely will not know this format. zip still is THE standard.
True, it is. However, end-users will follow whatever trends are set for them. ZIP got to be big and well-known because of PKZip, honestly.
If 7-Zip is that much better, then I'd say we go for it and put in something like red text above the link to the downloads page that we use 7-Zip.
Or, we could give users their option and offer both. Those concerned about bandwidth would use the 7-Zip version, and those who don't care can go with the other one.
As far as users and .EXE files - End Users download EXE files all of the time. They don't know any better. They see the box in MSIE and go, "Yeah, whatever, it's my computer and I wanna download it," click it away and move on. *shrugs*
That's why I make money outside of my job, cleaning up after people's idiotic mistakes, but that's another story altogether. If we offer them a self-extracting version and a 7-Zip'd version, that'd be even better in terms of download time/bandwidth.
Not to mention, if 7-Zip can be distributed with ReactOS, it's a good way to get it out there. Since it's under LGPL, it'd be something that could even be built into ReactOS in the same way as .ZIP format support is built into more recent versions of Windows (and hopefully, just as easy to disable, because I hate that feature, but plenty of people absolutely love it).
Not only all of that, but since it's a superior compression scheme, it'd be logical to support it and help further it's distribution so that people would use it. People don't just sit down very frequently and go, "Hrm. I think I am going to search out a new way to compress my files," because they figure that compression is compression is compression, and that's all there is to it.
All in all, I think it'd be wise, especially over the long-term, to use and support 7-Zip.
- Mike
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