Big Data

Five easy-to-use archiving/compression tools

By · July 18, 2012, 1:52 AM PST · JackOfAllTech1

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  • Introduction

    NOTE: If you'd prefer to view this information as a blog post, check out this entry in our Five Apps blog.

    Most platforms have their own built-in tools for archiving and compressing. But in some cases, those tools aren't enough. So it's good to know that there are other applications to pick up the slack. Let's dive in and examine several of these, so you can enjoy an alternative archiving and/or compression tool.

    Photo: iStockphoto.com/paparazzit

  • 7-Zip

    7-Zip is one of the best of the free archiving/compression tools available across platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac). Not only is 7-Zip free, it's also open source and offers every feature you could want.

  • 7-Zip

    7-Zip supports the 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, and WIM formats for packing/unpacking and ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR, and Z for packing only. 7-Zip also includes encryption utilities for compression.

  • PeaZip

    PeaZip is another free tool that offers plenty of features and an easy-to-use GUI. It supports more than 150 file formats. PeaZip also offers strong encryption, two-factor authentication, an encrypted password manager, secure deletion, a duplicate finder, the ability to save backup scripts, and much more.

  • PeaZip

    Once you've installed it, you'll notice seamless Explorer integration. PeaZip actually borrows some of the technology from 7 Zip.

  • WinRAR

    WinRAR is an archive manager that can also serve as a data backup tool (though you shouldn't depend on such a tool for critical backups).

  • WinRAR

    WinRAR is the only non-free tool in this gallery. This particular archiving application will set you back around $21.00 USD per license (with breaks for bulk licensing purchases). See this page for more details.

  • File Roller

    File Roller is the official archiving tool for the GNOME desktop. It supports numerous formats, has a great GUI, integrates into the Nautlius file manager, and can even work with ISO images and installation packages (such as .rpm and .deb).

  • File Roller

    This manager is free and comes preinstalled on any GNOME-based Linux distribution.

  • Ark

    Ark is the default archiving tool for the KDE destkop. With Ark, archives can be viewed, extracted, created, and modified. Ark can handle numerous formats, such as tar, gzip, bzip2, zip, rar, and lha.

  • Ark

    Ark offers seamless integration with the default KDE file manager, Konqueror. (Just install the Konqueror Integration plugin available in the kdeaddons package.)

Introduction

NOTE: If you'd prefer to view this information as a blog post, check out this entry in our Five Apps blog.

Most platforms have their own built-in tools for archiving and compressing. But in some cases, those tools aren't enough. So it's good to know that there are other applications to pick up the slack. Let's dive in and examine several of these, so you can enjoy an alternative archiving and/or compression tool.

Photo: iStockphoto.com/paparazzit

Related Topics:
Big Data Digital Transformation Internet of Things CXO Artificial Intelligence Data Management

By Jack Wallen

Jack Wallen is an award-winning writer for TechRepublic, The New Stack, and Linux New Media. He's covered a variety of topics for over twenty years and is an avid promoter of open source. For more news about Jack Wallen, visit his website jackwallen....

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