Both gzip and bzip2 command line tools are good compressing and archiving tools. For reference, bzip2 compresses a little smaller while gzip is the historical favorite.


Using tar to compress to gzip:

If you're making an archive, you can use gzip in conjunction with tar.

You do it this way: tar -cvzf archive.tar.gz /dir/to/be/archived

Uncompressing is simple: tar -xvzf archive.tar.gz


Using tar to compress to bzip2:

Compress: tar -cvjf archive.tar.bz2 /dir/to/be/archived

Uncompress: tar -xvjf archive.tar.bz2


gzip:

If you want it even simpler you can use gzip. Just cd to the folder your file is in and type: gzip filename


bzip2:

Same thing with bzip2; cd to the folder your file is in and type in: bzip2 filename

If you have a big file that you want to compress use the -9 extension: bzip2 -9 filename

After it's done, the file should be called filename.bz2

To uncompress: bunzip2 filename.bz2

The archive should be in the same folder that your original file was in... that's all there is to it!