Oct 082011
 

As many of you know the most used packages on GNU/Linux are deb and rpm.

deb is the extension of the Debian software package format and the most often used name for such binary packages.
Debian packages are standard Unix ar archives that include two gzipped, bzipped or lzmaed tar archives: one that holds the control information and another that contains the data.
The accepted program for handling these packages is dpkg, commonly used via other programs such as apt/aptitude or Gdebi.

RPM Package Manager (RPM) is a package management system. The name RPM variously refers to the .rpm file format, files in this format, software packaged in such files, and the package manager itself. RPM was intended primarily for GNU/Linux distributions; the file format is the baseline package format of the Linux Standard Base.

Originally developed by Ethan “E$” Cohen at Red Hat for Red Hat Linux, RPM is now used by many GNU/Linux distributions. It has also been ported to some other operating systems, such as Novell NetWare and IBM’s AIX.

Debian packages can be converted into other packages and vice versa using alien
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Jan 042011
 

archive

Or zip VS gzip VS bzip2 VS xz

In a previous article about the tar program I mentioned gzip and bzip2 compression methods as options to create a tarball (and I forgot xz).

To make amends today I will introduce the main methods to compress the file and I’ll do some tests to see how they behave.
I will consider zip, gzip, bzip2 and xv, i will not test compress another compression program present on Linux systems but now dated and surpassed by the other programs.

But as first thing an overview of these 4 methods/programs of compression

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