Install lzop with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• lzop

Project history

The official changelog says Oberhumer started writing lzop in September 1996 and made the first public release, version 0.90, on 10 August 1997. Version 1.00 followed in April 1998, and the project kept a deliberately gzip-like command-line model while using LZO for the speed-critical compression engine.

After the early releases, lzop matured slowly. Version 1.01 in 2003 refreshed the Autoconf build, added large-file support, and improved tar compatibility; 1.02rc1 in 2005 added LZO v2 support and platform fixes; 1.03 arrived in 2010; and 1.04 in 2017 was labeled the 20th anniversary release and added CMake build support.

Adoption history

lzop became popular in the era when backup speed and CPU use mattered more than maximum compression ratio. The official homepage explicitly points to backup workloads, noting that on modern systems lzop can be I/O-bound rather than CPU-bound.

The official homepage lists packages for AIX, Arch Linux, Debian, DragonFly BSD, Fedora, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Homebrew, HP-UX, and MacPorts, and the input package facts add Alpine, Ubuntu, Nix, pacman, and openSUSE-style package names. That breadth reflects lzop's old-school portability and its usefulness in scripts.

How it is used

The lzop command compresses files to .lzo, decompresses with -d, lists archive contents, writes to stdout, preserves metadata, and can use .tzo as shorthand for .tar.lzo. Its manual emphasizes that it keeps original files unchanged by default unless asked otherwise.

Users choose lzop for fast local backups, archival staging, and workflows where gzip compatibility of habits matters more than exact gzip format compatibility.

Why package nerds care

lzop is historically important because it was the standard Unix CLI face of LZO for many years. Before LZ4 and zstd became common, lzop was one of the obvious package-manager answers to 'I need compression, but gzip is too slow.'

It is also a reminder that package longevity often comes from predictable behavior: a small GPL tool, a stable file suffix, portable C, and enough gzip-like semantics to drop into scripts.

Timeline

• 1996: Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer starts writing lzop.
• 1997: lzop 0.90 is the first public release.
• 1998: lzop 1.00 is released.
• 2003: lzop 1.01 refreshes the build system and large-file support.
• 2017: lzop 1.04 is released as the 20th anniversary release.

Related projects

• LZO is the underlying compression library used by lzop.
• gzip shaped lzop's command-line behavior.
• LZ4 later occupied a similar high-speed compression niche in many package sets.

Sources

• https://www.lzop.org/
• https://www.lzop.org/download/
• https://www.lzop.org/lzop_man.php
• https://www.lzop.org/lzop_news.php
• source_facts.package-manager