Data compression

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Resources

This article provides a list of some of the file compression options available in Gentoo Linux.

Note
See archive managers on the recommended applications page for some examples of GUI archiving uilities.

Available software

This is a partial selection of data compression tools available in Gentoo. See app-arch package category on packages.g.o, or use a package query tool such as eix (app-portage/eix).

Name Package Description
ace app-arch/unace ACE unarchiver.
arj app-arch/arj Software tool for creating compressed file archives.
bzip2 app-arch/bzip2 High-quality data compressor that used to be the primary compression format used in distributing source code. It is slowly losing ground to the newer, tightly packable xz format.
cpio app-arch/cpio File archival tool which can also read and write tar files.
gzip app-arch/gzip The Standard GNU compressor. One of the oldest of the group, has less compression than bzip2 format.
lzop app-arch/lzop Fast (even real-time) compression/decompression.
7-Zip, 7zz app-arch/7zip
p7zip, 7za app-arch/p7zip Command-line port of 7-Zip for POSIX compliant systems. The 7-Zip compression type uses one of the highest compression ratios currently available.
rar app-arch/unrar Uncompress rar files.
rzip app-arch/rzip Compression program for large files.
Snappy app-arch/snappy High-speed compression/decompression library by Google.
tar app-arch/tar GNU's tarball generator software (used extensively by Gentoo Linux). tar has the ability to create .gz, .bz2, and .xz compression by passing different options. This is one tool all Linux users should have in their tool belt.
unar app-arch/unar The Unarchiver is an open-source utility that can extract RAR files.
UnZip app-arch/unzip Provides decompression for classic ZIP formats.
xz app-arch/xz-utils Includes utilities for managing LZMA compressed files.
Zip app-arch/zip Provides classic ZIP compression (this flavor created by Info-ZIP). Nice for cross-platform compatibility with Microsoft operating systems.
zoo app-arch/zoo Data compression program and format developed the 1980s and based on LZW.
zpaq app-arch/zpaq Journaling incremental deduplicating archiving compressor.
zstd app-arch/zstd zstd fast compression library.

External references