Alternatives to pixz
A parallel, indexing xz compressor that allows random access into compressed tar.xz archives. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
pixz
A parallel, indexing xz compressor that allows random access into compressed tar.xz archives.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as pixz.
XZ Utils
The standard command-line tool for creating and reading .xz files.
XZ Utils is the standard .xz tool shipped on nearly every Linux and BSD system and also runs on Windows, but it lacks pixz's indexed random access into tar.xz.
Zstandard
Meta's compression tool that hits near-zlib ratios at far higher speed, now used across Linux and modern filesystems.
Zstandard uses the .zst format with much faster compression and decompression, a lower maximum ratio than xz, and builds for Windows, macOS and Linux.
pigz
A parallel implementation of gzip that uses multiple CPU cores to compress data faster.
pigz compresses in parallel across cores but writes gzip format, which is read almost everywhere though with a lower ratio than xz.
Lzip
A command-line lossless compressor using a simplified LZMA, designed for long-term archiving and data safety.
Lzip uses the .lz format with integrity checks and recovery options for long-term archives, but it is single-threaded and needs plzip for multi-core speed.
LZ4
A lossless compression format and command-line tool built for very high compression and decompression speed.
LZ4 favours very high speed over ratio, scales across CPU cores, and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, but compresses less than xz.
crabz
A cross-platform command-line tool for fast parallel compression and decompression, similar to pigz but written in Rust.
crabz is a Rust multi-threaded compressor for gzip-family formats rather than xz, installable through Homebrew or Debian packages, and described by its author as a proof of concept.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
GNU Tar
The GNU command-line tool for creating, extracting, updating and listing tar archives.
ratarmount
A command-line tool that mounts TAR, ZIP, RAR and compressed archives as a read-only filesystem.
bsdtar (libarchive)
Command-line archivers built on libarchive that read and write tar, zip, cpio, ISO and more.
7-Zip
The small, free archiver that opens practically every archive format and compresses better than ZIP.
