Compression utilities are a necessity in a Linux environment. Table A.12 contains a list of the main tools used in compression tasks.
COMMAND
GENERAL USAGE
DESCRIPTION
gzip
gzip FILE
Utility used to compress files. (Commonly used to compress tar archives.)
Files compressed with gzip usually have a .gz extension.
gunzip
gunzip FILE.gz
Utility used to uncompress gzip files. (Same as gzip -d.)
bzip2
bzip2 FILE
Utility used to compress files. (Utilizes a different algorithm than gzip. Also used to compress tar archives.)
Files compressed with bzip2 usually have a .bz2 extension.
bunzip2
bunzip2 FILE.bz2
Utility used to uncompress bzip2 files. (Same as bzip2 -d.)