I've always used TAR and ZIP for compression, but recently I have heard about the *.Z
compression algorithm. This brought up a question for me:
With all of these compression systems, which one is best for general use and compression?
Running a few tests, I have discovered that tar
, as I discovered, does NOT really compress (unless explicitly specified). Meaning, what is it good for compared to other compression methods?
I am already aware that ZIP is the most widely-used compression system, but should I use it instead of *.Z
, *.7z
, .tar
, or .tar.<insert ending here>
?
Post Summary:
- Should I use
*.tar
,*.Z
,*.7z
,.tar
, or.tar.<insert ending here>
for the best compression? - If plain
*.tar
doesn't compress, why do we use it?
EDIT: Not all algorithms allow storing of Linux permissions (from what I learned). Which do, and is there some sort of hack (or script) I could use to store permissions?