Archive manager

[hextejas]

I swear that there used to be an option under the Computer icon that would let me list mint versions, etc but somehow it is no longer there.
Anyhow, here goes.
Is there a better zip file manager than Archive ?
I zipped up 2 mp3 files and the zip file was the same size as the sum of the 2 mp3 files.
That seemed odd.

thanks

[Cosmo.]

Usually we need at first some system specs. But to make it short: MP3 is an already compressed format, there is nothing to compress any more.

[spamegg]

I zipped up 2 mp3 files and the zip file was the same size as the sum of the 2 mp3 files.

That's quite normal. Compression works by finding blocks of repeated data patterns like

Code: Select all

000000000000

and condenses it like

Code: Select all

0 12

(this is just a big oversimplification of how compression algorithms work).

So if your input files don't have patterns of repeated data then they won't benefit from compression. For example, if we take some file that has repetitions, and encrypt that file (which changes the data to look randomized, without recognizable patterns) then it won't benefit from compression. On the other extreme, files with a lot of repeated patterns can compress incredibly well (several GBs can shrink down to 1GB, I've seen it happen).

I'm guessing that since mp3 files contain music, the data would be quite variable without big blocks of repeated data patterns. Generally it's impossible to know how much compression benefit there will be, without knowing exactly what the data looks like.