Zstandard 1.5.7 was released a short time ago as the newest update to this widely-used compression algorithm backed by Meta. Zstd 1.5.7 packs more than 500 commits, including new performance optimizations and other enhancements.

On the performance side, Zstd 1.5.7 brings better compression speed when using small data blocks... 4KB block size around 10% faster while 32KB block sizes are around 20% faster, +12% for 64KB, and then falling down to +5% for 128GB block sizes. Some nice gains with the updated Zstd for those using small block sizes:

There is also performance improvements around dictionary compression, up to 4.9x faster performance with "--patch-from" improvements, and compression ratio improvements for lage files.

Zstd 1.5.7 also brings command-line option upgrades with a new "--max" compression option for those really wanting to pursue maximum compression. Plus a variety of bug fixes incorporated over the past year.

Zstd 1.5.7 can be downloaded from GitHub . Now to hope that the in-kernel-tree Zstandard implementation is updated against Zstd 1.5.7 in a timely manner...