We simply cannot live without compression tools anymore. I get questioned quite regularly about the right compression tool to use, and thought that I would do a quick roundup of all the freeware compression tools available out there.

To my mind the free tools available have overtaken the commercial tools, so I will not spend time on reviews of commercial tools. Archiving as t is called in Linux is quite a easy task except for unzipping rar files, so i’ll leave it for a next post.

7 Zip

If I was made to choose one archiving tool, this would be it. There is no ends to what this piece of software cannot zip or unzip. It supports multiple compression formats. This piece of software is a free download with no strings attached, no registrations or any unwanted jazz. Simply download install and go.

In windows, it will seamlessly integrate into the windows shell, and will be available if you rightclick on a file. It also supports encryption so you can password protect all your zips nicely

Download from here.

Zip Genius

I do not personally know this software, but a buddy of mine raves about it. Here is what it says in the introduction on their site:

Claim your space back and reorder your files with ZipGenius: ZipGenius is the that lets you compress files to almost any kind of archive. ZipGenius supports more than 20 compressed archive formats, including CD/DVD-ROM image files in ISO9660 standard. This is the file compression suite you were searching for: it is free and easy to use, plus it supports more than 20 formats of compressed archives, including RAR, ARJ, ACE, CAB, SQX, OpenOffice.org documents and the excellent ZipGenius now can executable files going to be added to a ZIP archive through the compressor.

If The above do not work for you, here’s a list of some other freeware zip tools. Click on the name to go to the website:
Jzip
Peazip
Freezip
Coffecup free zip wizard

Now off you go. Go zip something

Regards

AJ