About Compressed Archive Formats

Compressed archives are created by merging several files into a single file, making them more convenient for transportation or storage purposes. Archiving software often includes additional features, such as encryption, file segmentation, checksum verification, self-extraction, and self-installation. The Zip format is widely utilized and is compatible with both Windows and OSX operating systems. Another popular and versatile format is RAR. Unix systems rely on the tar file format, whereas Linux systems utilize the tar and gz format.