Zstandard For Linux

zstd, short for Zstandard, is one of the newest compression algorithms/tools. If you're unfamiliar with it, then it might come as a surprise that it's actually the brainchild of the engineers at Facebook (now Meta).

The main goal behind developing Zstandard was to achieve insanely high compression speeds and very good compression ratios. Since its launch in 2015, the algorithm proved itself to be quite successful, and it's slowly but surely becoming the default compression tool for many Linux distributions out there.

If your Linux OS does not have Zstandard, fear not, as you can install it with relative ease via the command line.

For Ubuntu, Debian, and Linux Mint, simply run: "sudo apt install zstd." CentOS, Fedora, Red Hat and AlmaLinux users can install it using "sudo dnf install zstd," while Arch Linux and Manjaro users can achieve the same results by running "sudo pacman -S zstd."

Not to say that Zstandard is the best compression algorithm out there, but very few algorithms can actually produce a higher compression ratio. However, this comes at the cost of speed (making the slower than zstd).

Zstandard's main website paints a clear picture of the algorithm's capabilities via various benchmarks, a case for small data compression (also called dictionary compression), zstd's rich set of APIs, and its integration with multiple programming languages.

Zstandard has definitely flown under the radar which is somewhat surprising since it's a Facebook/Meta product.

Nowadays, Zstandard is used by many of the biggest database providers, file system and storage services, archiving tools, networking services, and it's even been used in the gaming industry.

All of this thanks to its speed and high compression ratios, but also thanks to its innate flexibility that provides easy integration options.