gzip, bzip2 and tar
EXPERT PACKING
A short command is all it takes to pack your data or extract it from an archive.
Archiving provides many benefits: packed and compressed files occupy less space on your disk and require less bandwidth on the Internet. Linux has both GUI-based programs, such as File Roller or Ark, and command-line tools for creating and unpacking various archive types. This article examines some shell tools for archiving files and demonstrates the kind of expert packing that clever combinations of Linux commands offer the command line user. Nicely Packed with "gzip"
The gzip (GNU Zip) program is the default packer on Linux. Gzip compresses simple files, but it does not create complete directory archives. In its simplest form, the gzip command looks like this:
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