7 of the Best Free Linux Compression Tools
Data compression is the process of storing data in a format
that uses less space than the original representation would
use. Compressing data can be very useful particularly in the field of
communications as it enables devices to transmit or store data in fewer
bits. Besides reducing transmission bandwidth, compression increases
the
amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive or other
storage device.
There are two main types of compression. Lossy compression is
a data encoding method which reduces a file by discarding certain
information. When the file is uncompressed, not all of the original
information will be recovered. Lossy compression is typically used to
compress video, audio and images, as well as internet telephony. The
fact that information is lost during compression will often be
unnoticeable to most users. Lossy compression techniques are used in
all DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and most multimedia available on the internet.
However, lossy compression is not appropriate where the
original and the decompression data must be identical. In this
situation, the user will need to use lossless compression. This type of
compression is employed in compressing software applications, files,
and text
articles. Loseless compression is also popular in archiving your music.
This article focuses on lossless compression tools.
To provide an insight into the quality of software available
for Linux, we have compiled a list of 7 of the best free compression
tools. Hopefully, there will be something of interest
here for anyone who wishes to maximise their computer and network
resources. We give our highest recommendation to Lrzip.
Now, let's explore the 7 compression tools. For each
title we have compiled its own portal page, a full
description with an in-depth analysis of its
features, together with links to relevant resources and
reviews.
| Compression Tools |
| Lrzip |
Achieve very high
compression ratios and speed when used with large files |
| lbzip2 |
Multi-threaded
implementation of bzip2, suited for
serial and parallel processing |
| 7-Zip |
File archiver with a high compression ratio |
| XZ
Utils |
Successor
to the Lempel-Ziv/Markov-chain Algorithm
compression format |
| bzip2 |
Freely available, patent free, high-quality data
compressor |
| gzip |
Provides
the standard GNU file compression utilities |
| PeaZip |
Cross-platform portable file archiver |
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Last Updated Sunday, February 05 2012 @ 11:55 AM EST
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