> Just out of curiosity, is bzip a better compressor than gzip?  (No,
> I've not tried it yet.)

Yes, it is better. The difference (w.r.t. gzip) in compressed image
size is only about 5-10%, but think of how much _expanded_ binary
that corresponds to. It also is distributed under a BSD-style license
with no ad clause, so it fits in well with other project goals.