[mdlug] Archive formats (was "Linux Format" March issue available for download)

[Jeff Hanson]

On 3/4/09, Aaron Kulkis <akulkis00 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Suppose you're trying to MIGRATE to Linux, but have no Linux
> machine available... then .zip is the best fileformat.

7-Zip is better.  It has a higher compression ratio.  Common Linux
archives tar/gz and tar/bzip2 are pathetically slow because they have
to be uncompressed first and then extract out the file listing from
the tar.  If I open a large archive like a Windows VMware image
(2-8GB) it can take 15 minutes just to get a file listing.  If I use
7-Zip it takes only seconds.  Extraction is faster also; I think that
most Linux tools extract the tar first and then its contents which
takes longer and uses up a lot of disk space.  Of course 7-Zip doesn't
support *nix file permissions but it's rarely an issue for me.