How can I evaluate the best choice of archive format for compressing files?

Posted by Mehrdad on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Mehrdad
Published on 2011-07-03T09:06:59Z Indexed on 2011/11/22 10:02 UTC
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Filed under:

compression

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zip

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archiving

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7-zip

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gzip

In general, I've observed the following:

Linux-y files or tools use bzip2 or gzip for distributing archives
Windows-y files or tools use ZIP for distributing archives
Many people use 7-Zip for creating and distributing their own archives

Questions:

What are the advantages and disadvantages of these formats, all of which appear to be open formats? When/why should I choose one (say, 7-Zip) over another (say, ZIP)?
Why does the trend above appear to hold, even though all of these are portable formats? Are there any particular advantages to using a particular archive format on a particular platform?

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