Most software, when not in a package such as .deb
, comes in .tar.gz
or .tar.xz
. Is it necessary to use tar
before using xz
or gz
? What are the advantages of doing that?
If you want to combine several files - use tar
and then, optionally, compress your tar
archive with gzip or another tool. If you have 1 file only - using tar
is meaningless, just compress the file with gzip