Repository:

https://github.com/moisespr123/cmix_gui

Hi everyone,

Today, I started working on a new GUI (Graphical User Interface) for another excellent compression software which works only on the command line. This compressor is called cmix and was created by Byron Knoll. It is also open source and released under the GPL license.

This is what cmix looks under the command prompt:

It’s very simple to use there. If you want to compress a file, you pass the -c parameter along with the input file and an output filename. To decompress, you change the -c to a -d and enter the compressed file first and then the output filename to the extracted file. But the software is more powerful if you pass a dictionary, in which case, you use either -c or -d, pass the dictionary filename, and then the input file and output filename.

Of course, not everyone likes using the command line, and that’s where this GUI comes handy:

You simply select whether you want to compress or extract. You then browse for a file or a folder (It will compress each file individually as there’s actually no folder support in cmix), and then you browse for a location to save the file if you’re compressing a file. If you’re compressing a folder, each individual file will be named the same as the input file with the .cmix<version><_dict if a dictionary was used> and stored in the same folder as the original file.

By default, it will use the latest cmix version available, which at this time, v15b is the only version supported by the software. You then select if you want to use the English dictionary which is provided by cmix and press the Start button. The compression will start.

Beware: cmix is extremely RAM intensive, and you’ll need 32GB of RAM if you want to use this. 16GB of RAM may work, but it will use the pagefile. Interestingly, I managed to use this in my 32GB AMD Ryzen machine and my 16GB Lenovo Y720, both of which uses DDR4 RAM, but the software wouldn’t run with my 16GB Intel machine with DDR3 RAM, although that machine had nearly half the RAM used and may be why it didn’t work. Also, it didn’t run with my 8GB Lenovo Y510p, so don’t even try that. 32GB is the recommended size.

Some screenshots that show just how RAM intensive it is:

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You can see it is using all of the RAM there, and here below you can see it is using the pagefile and hence the disk activity:

Of course, this is justified as the compressed files turn out pretty small.

Format	Size
PDF (original)	1,019,076 bytes
7z	942,720 bytes
RAR	942,049 bytes
ZIP	941,627 bytes
cmix v15b with English dictionary	647,512 bytes

As you can see, it’s a huge difference.

I hope this GUI is useful for all who like trying out experimental compression software. The GUI repo is the following: https://github.com/moisespr123/cmix_gui

And check out more of my software on my GitHub profile!
https://github.com/moisespr123

Resources:

cmix repo: https://github.com/byronknoll/cmix
cmix forum thread: https://encode.su/threads/1925-cmix
cmix website: http://www.byronknoll.com/cmix.html