diff --git a/Makefile.am b/Makefile.am
index 2032182512..0e719fb53a 100644
--- a/Makefile.am
+++ b/Makefile.am
@@ -27,6 +27,8 @@ man_MANS = lyx.1
 
 #Wait some time for bumping automake 1.11, which can use dist-xz
 #directly without this code, which is to be removed.
+#xz has low compression by default, but can be affected via
+#export XZ_OPT=-9ev put somewhere in the makefile.
 lyxdist: dist
 	bunzip2 $(PACKAGE)-$(VERSION).tar.bz2
 	xz -9 $(PACKAGE)-$(VERSION).tar