Reason for gz over bz2?

[Gianfranco Berardi <gberardi@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

When it comes to distributing files, I am used to seeing tar.gz or tgz 
extensions.  The Linux kernel, however, uses bz2. It makes sense since 
the kernel is huge and bz2 has better compression.

Someone on the Indie Gamer forums brought up the fact that bzip2 is so 
much better than gzip in this regard. You can see the discussion here: 
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=10754

In the end, I couldn't really answer why so many projects continue use 
gzip when providing distributables. I don't believe there is a technical 
reason why a game or other software project couldn't use bzip2 since it 
should be available in any distribution (right?), but perhaps there is a 
concern that most people don't use it and so you shouldn't use it. 
Still, I think it would be really simple to just provide extraction 
instructions with the download link. You just pass xjf instead of xzf to 
tar.

So is there a reason why more people don't use bzip2 instead of gzip?

--
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Staff Reviewer for Game Tunnel, the Independent Underground:
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