Alternatives to lrzip
A command-line compressor for large files that finds redundancy across long distances in the data. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
lrzip
A command-line compressor for large files that finds redundancy across long distances in the data.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as lrzip.
Zstandard
Meta's compression tool that hits near-zlib ratios at far higher speed, now used across Linux and modern filesystems.
Zstandard trades some ratio for much higher speed, offers a long-range mode for distant repetition, and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux with a standardised format.
XZ Utils
The standard command-line tool for creating and reading .xz files.
XZ Utils uses the widely supported .xz format with strong LZMA2 ratios on every platform, though without lrzip's long-distance redundancy search, and high levels are slow.
zpaqfranz
Keep compressed, versioned archives of changing files.
zpaqfranz is an MIT-licensed archiver that deduplicates data and keeps versioned snapshots of changing files, running on Windows, macOS and Linux.
bzip3
A command-line compressor and library intended as a stronger successor to bzip2.
bzip3 is a command-line compressor and library aimed at large text and source archives, with cat, grep and less style helpers, but a less widely supported format.
Lzip
A command-line lossless compressor using a simplified LZMA, designed for long-term archiving and data safety.
Lzip focuses on long-term archiving with integrity checks and data recovery options, using a simplified LZMA, but is single-threaded without plzip.
Kanzi
A multi-threaded lossless data compressor written in Java with selectable transforms and entropy codecs.
Kanzi is a multi-threaded Java compressor with runtime-selectable transforms and entropy codecs, requiring a Java runtime and using its own format.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Precomp
A command-line precompressor that unpacks compressed streams inside files so other compressors shrink them further.
pixz
A parallel, indexing xz compressor that allows random access into compressed tar.xz archives.
pigz
A parallel implementation of gzip that uses multiple CPU cores to compress data faster.
GNU Tar
The GNU command-line tool for creating, extracting, updating and listing tar archives.
Disk ARchive (dar)
Command-line archiver and backup tool with compression, encryption and differential archives.
