From the course: Ubuntu Linux: Essential Commands and System Administration

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Compress and decompress files

Compress and decompress files

From the course: Ubuntu Linux: Essential Commands and System Administration

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Compress and decompress files

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Archives let us combine a lot of individual files into one larger file, and compression gives us the opportunity to reduce the overall size of one or more files. Archives and file compression can sometimes be treated as the same thing, but here on Linux, we need to at least initially think of them separately. An archive is not necessarily compressed, but it does take a bunch of files and combine them all into one file, which can make it easier to store, transmit, or keep track of. On Linux, the archive format we use most often is tar, short for tape archive. Originally, this format was designed to take a number of files and store them in a way that makes sense for a tape drive to record the information onto a tape. A tape is linear, so seeking between different locations takes a lot of time as compared to hard drives or solid-state memory. So the tape archive needed to have all the information organized in a way that worked for that medium. A tape archive collects everything into one…

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