ECW vs. JPG2000 on Linux?

[Bill Binko]

Hello, everyone

I have a choice between ECW and JPEG 2000 for a set of DOQQ files.  I am
running CVS Mapserver and GDAL, and Mandrake Linux 10.1.

Could anyone give me direction to which would be better?  Also, the
original source files are available in GEOTiff format, and they have two
versions, 8 bit and 16 bit.  Is there any reason to grab the raw files, if
I'm serving them up over the web as PNGs anyway?  The raw files are of
course much much larger (>250GB), and I think I'll have to compress them
anyway.

I have to make a decision by Wednesday morning EST, so any input would be
greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Bill

PS: Frank, I remember you gave me an anwer of ECW, but I had not mentioned
Linux, so I want to double check.