Re: Why are the man pages compressed?

From: Steve Ackman (steve_at_SNIP-THIS.twoloonscoffee.com)
Date: 10/17/03 

Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 23:15:16 -0400

On 16 Oct 2003 06:17:12 -0700, Adam <adams_forum@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> Does anyone know why the man pages in /usr/share/man all seem to be
> compressed with bz2 compression? Maybe it's just my system or some
> systems. It seems like an inefficient way to do it to me because they
> have to be uncompressed every time you want to read them.

  It saves space.

  About 5 years ago or so, man pages weren't compressed.
(At least I don't recall that they were on RH 4.x) When
the typical hard drive was in the 300-500MB range, the
space gained through compressing man pages was fairly
significant. Given 120+GB drives, it hardly seems relevant
any more, and with today's typical systems sporting 2+ GHz
processors, the cycles to decompress seem about as relevant.
  Net: Older machines can more easily fit all the man
pages, even if it does take a second to format them. 

-- 
Steve Ackman
http://twoloonscoffee.com	(Need green beans?)
http://twovoyagers.com		(glass, linux & other stuff)

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