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

[Aaron Kulkis]

Jeff Hanson wrote:
> 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.

not at all:
tar xvf  somearchive.tar
tar xzvf somearchive.tar.gz


 

>     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

But who widespread is software which reads 7-zip archives,
not only on Linux, but most importantly, on Windows and OSX?

> 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.

So in otherwords, it's has all of the disadvantages of
pkZIP format, with none of the installed base, although
it does extract faster -- which generally doesn't matter
because with compressed archives, the recipient generally
uses them once, and then either stores them, or removes
them from the system.

I think you're missing the big picture.