Conclusion

Back in the days of slow modems and tiny hard drives, archiving and compression was a necessity. These days, it's more of a convenience, but it's still something you'll find yourself using all the time. For instance, if you ever download source code to compile it, more than likely you'll find yourself face-to-face with a file such as sourcecode.tar.gz. In the future, you'll probably see more and more of those files ending with .tar.bz2. And if you exchange files with Windows users, you're going to run into files that end with .zip. Learn how to use your archival and compression tools because you're going to be using them far more than you think.