beefyi

tar.gz Cheatsheet

guideslinuxbeeps
Format Compression Ratio Speed Best For
gzip (.tar.gz) Good Fast General use, maximum compatibility
bzip2 (.tar.bz2) Better Slow When size matters more than speed
xz (.tar.xz) Best Slowest Distribution archives, long-term storage
zstd (.tar.zst) Very good Very fast Backups, CI/CD pipelines, modern systems

Commands for gzip and xz

# create gzip
tar -czf archive.tar.gz folder/

# list gzip
tar -tzf archive.tar.gz

# extract gzip here
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz

# extract gzip to dir
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz -C path/
# create xz
tar -cJf archive.tar.xz folder/

# list xz
tar -tJf archive.tar.xz

# extract xz here
tar -xJf archive.tar.xz

# extract xz to dir
tar -xJf archive.tar.xz -C path/