How to compress / extract tar files on Linux

Introduction

Often the zip files have quite bad compression rate, or they have permission issues on Linux machines.

As a standard compress option, tar files have quite nice compression rate and speed on Linux systems.

Alternatively, you can use command to tar a file / folder:

tar -zcvf <name>.tar.gz <target_directory>

Compress into spitted chunks in certain cases when the single compressed file is too large (e.g. split the compressed files into 1024MB chunks):

tar -cvj large-files.avi | split -b 1024m -d - "large-split.tar.bz."

tar -zxvf archive_name.tar.gz

To extract connected chunks of compressed file:

cat large-split.tar.xz.* | tar -xzvf -

Note: the tar compress option has different variations, for example .gz, .xz, .bz. etc. Please change accordingly to your specific file type.

Zip files often have a poor compression rate and may encounter permission issues on Linux systems.

Tar files are recommended as they offer a good compression rate and speed on Linux systems.

Right-click on the folder or file, select 'compress', and then choose the tar.xz option.

You can use the command 'tar -zcvf .tar.gz ' to compress a file or folder.

You can extract a tar.gz file using the command 'tar -zxvf archive_name.tar.gz'.

Yes, you can split a large compressed file into chunks using the command 'tar -cvj large-files.avi | split -b 1024m -d - "large-split.tar.b."'.

To extract connected chunks, use the command 'cat large-split.tar.xz.* | tar -xzvf -'.

Yes, the tar compress option has different variations such as .gz, .xz, .bz, etc.

Yes, the terminal method is a valid option for compressing files and folders on Linux.