On 12/06/2012 09:04, Craig Ringer wrote:
> (Digressing somewhat:)
>
> I don't understand why *nix users stick to tar. As a long-time Linux
> user, I avoid it and think tar files are obsolete. Creating an archive
> then compressing it with a stream cypher means that a one-bit error
> renders the archive completely destroyed after the error bit, so it's
> not good for backups. The compression ratio offered by tar+gzip is
> poor, so it isn't much good for file exchange unless you ditch gzip
> for bzip2, which is _really_ slow and still doesn't offer great
> compression ratios.
>
> Better IMO to stick to zip files, or 7zip when compression ratio
> matters. IMO about the only use for tar is if you need to archive
> device nodes, POSIX ACLs, xattrs, etc, in which case `star' or GNU tar
> are better choices.
>
The only reason I use tar is it preserves user information and
permissions, which AFAIK the others don't (although never used p7zip)
John
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