Block based compressors like gzip, bzip2, xz, lzma, etc don’t natively know how to compress multiple files, to them it’s just bytes in bytes out. Using these wi

Block based compressors like gzip, bzip2, xz, lzma, etc don’t natively know how to compress multiple files, to them it’s just bytes in bytes out. Using these with tar allows both archive (multiple files / directories in one file) as well as compression. Such usage has the potential for higher compression ratios because it can deduplicate across the entire archive. Zip compresses each file individually, but has an uncompressed index. Tools like 7z use standard compression algorithms (I believe Lzma) with a different archive format. It’s all about how you want to integrate or customize your tools.