[dnr]

Isn't that exactly the point, and why it's so great? It's a single algorithm that's tune-able across that wide range of speed/ratio trade-offs using a single parameter. So you can just use one thing for almost every application instead of picking between three different things.

(Yes, I know that one parameter controls multiple different settings internally, so there are multiple dimensions if you're willing to dig that deep.)

Anyway, my recollection from looking at benchmarks a while ago: zstd used at similar ratios to lzma compresses in similar time but decompresses much faster, and it's also faster than gzip when set to comparable ratios to that. lz4 is still faster than the fastest zstd modes, and lzma at the most extreme settings still gets better ratios that the best zstd can do. But there's a huge wide swath in the middle where zstd beats them all, and that's quite valuable.

[axiolite]

> So you can just use one thing for almost every application instead of picking between three different things.

I honestly can't see how remembering several ranges of zstd levels and their time/speed trade-off is any easier than remembering lz4, pigz, xz, which all happen to have good default setting.

[ahofmann]

I use zstd once a year, and it is very easy: 1. the default (3 on my machine) is fast and compresses well. 2. if you need to get the best compression level for your use case, use the benchmark "zstd -b1 -e15 yourfile" and after a few minutes you have your answer.

I can't see why I should ever in my life use another program for compressing things than zstd.