LinuxPapers.org: Compressing Files in GNU/Linux

“This article will show how to compress, decompress and
archive files in GNU/Linux using different programs.”

“Gzip… is a very common compression program that is developed
by the members of the GNU project. The main function of gzip is to
read a file and compress it. The new compressed file is given the
extension .gz and if the compression is successful, the original
file is deleted.”

“…gzip has a serious limitation: it cannot archive files. …
Here the tar command… comes to the rescue. Tar has been around
since the beginning of Unix, when files needed to be backed up on
tapes. In fact, the name tar comes from Tape Archiver, even though
it can do a lot more than archive files onto a tape.”

“Zip and Unzip (Figure 3) will be familiar to DOS users: they
are the most commonly used compression programs for DOS and
Windows. Unix has its own zip program that is compatible with the
DOS one. This means that an archive created on DOS can be
decompressed on GNU/Linux, and vice versa. Unlike gzip, zip
compresses and archives. With one command, you can save and
compress many files and directories in a single file.”

“Bzip2 (Figure 4) is a fairly new program that compresses files
at a much quicker rate than other similar programs.”

Complete
Story