I am a huge proponent of zstd after I learned about it on HN.
I've recently had to compress a 12 Gb csv file. zstd took ~3 sec for compression and ~11 sec for decompression and got the file to ~1.1 Gb. Xz took ~3.5 min for compression(!) and the resulting file was ~740 Mb(I didn't measure the decompression time). I just realized that in most cases it's more efficient to use zstd, especially for file transfer.
The majority of OS that people use either have it installed or can be trivially downloaded to, so I see no point in using gzip nowadays, unless it is mandated by API
Hey, I didn't confuse them but I guess I should have been more specific. I've addressed 2 main points in my text. 1) In my opinion, for the vast majority of cases you don't need to be worried about comparability, as you can easily install better alternatives to gzip for platforms a lot of people use. 2) I think zstd can become a primary replacement for gzip due to its high speed of compression and good compression ratio, even when compared to such great algorithms like xz/lzma. Sacrificing some compression ratio for (de)compression speed is worth it, for me at least
The majority of OS that people use either have it installed or can be trivially downloaded to, so I see no point in using gzip nowadays, unless it is mandated by API