Re: KDE compression options: tar, zip, or rar
On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 03:22:07PM +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > tar is not compression, it's an archive (tar = Tape ARchive). You generally
> > zip tarballs with either bzip (*.tar.bz) or gzip (*.tar.gz or *.tgz). I
> > don't know if KDE defaults to one of these.
> >
>
> The file manager entry says Compress -> As Zip/Tar so I suppose that
> the tarballs are compressed with Zip. The other tow entries are "As
> Zip" and "As Rar" so I cannot imagine what benefit Zip/Tar has over
> Zip.
>
>
> > If you're sending files to people, in general, a *nixy user will be
> > expecting a zipped tarball, most Windows Users will be expecting a zip
> > archive. More 'power' windows users will be expecting .rars.
> >
>
> These are backup directories for my own use. Why is Rar considered a
> power user tool? Is it superior (more compressed, faster, less prone
> to corruption)?
Its a properitary format. If you want good performance, go for 7zip (as
an archiver, or lzma instead of gzip). In fact, I'm quite surprised to
see it is not supported there.
>
>
> > Zip is probably the most widely-supported, but not always installed by
> > default on Linux distros. I've never found a [b|g]zipped tarball to be
> > particularly lacking.
> >
>
> I don't think that any of them are lacking, but I would like to know
> each format's features and benefits. Thanks.
Tar is most likely to preserve all features of a Linux file system.
Zip, unlike tar, provides more of random-access to the contents of the
archive: no need to read the whole archive to get a single file. Rar has
two modes: The "solid" one provides better compression but has the same
issue as Tar.
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