Archiving "Files" Container Question

[gregorylock]

In my Dos and Windows days I learned how to pkzip files and directories.  As Windows moved on I continued to use the zip format.

I have several web browser profiles.  I've put in a lot of time creating bookmarks etc.  I decided that I should start archiving my .mozilla and .waterfox directories.  That way I can store them on any formatted usb drives.  I tested this out zipping them and discovered that I get errors.  However some of the other formats seem to work.  I decided to google a list of containers to find out what is the most popular.  Here is what I found. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Here is a list of formats I'm looking at:  .7z .ar .bz2 .cbz .ear .gz .jar .lzma .tar .tar.7z .tar.bz2 .tar.gz .tar.lzma .tar.xz .war .xz

Which one is the most popular in the Linux community?

[farevildee]

for linux from what ive seen mostly uses tar files. not sure if that helps.

[fraterchaos]

tar was always the standard linux archive format... but these days you should be able to use nearly anything.

I am surprised you are getting errors with zip files, they should work fine. What archiver are you using to create them?

[Ironclaw]

It always depends on having the underlying libraries installed although I thought it would gripe about that.

[Spatry]

Some time ago I compared file compression formats and the two best formats in terms of compressed size are 7z and tar.xz, I use tar.xz for most of my archiving needs.

[CwF]

I've used thunars "Create Archive" a few times, and will use any installed compression.

now I would just copy the directory as is to a usb drive. I'd maybe zip it up if I were sending it across a network. It's not like space is at a premium anymore, larger files are more risky on poor quality usb drives, and we're limited to a 4GB file size on default formatting.

But then my .mozilla directory in this instance is only 28MB.

Without a fully functional 7zFM like utility in Linux I've abandoned using any. I do use file system level compression, and now expand any zipped files into directories, so my perusing is never slowed by an additional click.

[Ironclaw]

7zip is available on Linux, I'd assume that it's in the default repository of practically every distribution out there.