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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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How to write a 'tar' command (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

tar is just the worst shell command in existence. Why do people still bother with it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (3 children)

What do you use instead?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

atool is a good alternative apparently, but I am still new to it

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago

I use zip/unzip if I have the option

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (4 children)

I avoid it and use zip or 7z if I can. But for some crazy reason some people stil insist on using that garbage tool and I have no idea why.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

If you want to do more than just "pack this directory up just as it is" you'll pretty quickly get to the limits of zip. tar is way more flexible about selecting partial contents and transformation on packing or extraction.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Are zip and 7z really that much easier?

tar cf foo.tar.xz wherever/
zip -r foo.zip wherever/
7z a foo.7z wherever/

I get that tar needs an f for no-longer-relevant reasons whereas other tools don't, but I never understood the meme about it beyond that. Is c for "create" really that much worse than a for "add"?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

You do you. Compression is waste of time; storage is cheap in that you can get more, but time? Time, you never get back.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

as in time wasted transferring a highly compressible file that you didn't bother compressing first?

it's only a waste of time when the file format is already compressed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Yes, and I'd rather not have my time wasted by waiting on thousands of small files transfer, rather than just compressing it and the time spent of one file transferring being much smaller.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Because everyone else does, and if everyone else does, then I must, and if I do, then everyone else must, and then everyone else does.

Repeat loop.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

For all I care it goes on the same garbage dump as LaTeX.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I think that's pretty mean towards the free software developers spending their spare time on Latex and the GNU utils.
I and many academics use Latex, and I personally am very happy to be able to use something which is plain text and FLOSS.
I also don't see your problems with tar; it does one thing and it does it good enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

speaking of which, you might want to check out typst if you haven't heard of it - I really hope this replaces most uses of LaTeX in the next years.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Because it is faster to transport one big ass tar than 10k individual files, and compression is waste of time.