Compression Utilities

Compression utilities are one of the most critical tools you’ll need. And, with today’s
more efficient compression, not only are you able to compress files for more
efficient e-mail, FTP, Web site downloads and storage, but you can extract them
easily, too.
One of the biggest issues in compression is cross-platform compatibility. In the
past, most UNIX and related operating systems used certain compression formats,
Macintosh used others, and Windows still others. Sending files back and forth or
making them available in compressed formats onWeb sites always means making
sure you’ve got software capable of cross-platform compression and extraction.
For Windows, the most widely used package for this is WinZip (www.winzip
.com/), a low-cost shareware utility that creates and extracts a wide number of
compression formats that are used across platforms



For Macintosh, a commonly used package is StuffIt, which is also available forWindows
and Linux. It’s an excellent commercial choice—it’s low-cost, cross-platform
compatible, and easy to use. You can find it at www.stuffit.com/.
For a good graphical interface that provides multicompression, multiextraction on
Linux, gnochive is available for free at http://gnochive.sourceforge.net/.