Packing files

To pack means to unite several files in one file, called an archive. Practically the data can be compressed in the same step. There are two ways to del with compressed files:

1- GUI tools (with Graphical user interface):

Ark: default archive manager of KDE.
Archive Manager(Formerly known as File Roller): the default manager of GNOME.
Engrampa: the default archive manager of MATE desktop environment.
Xarchiver: the default archive manager of lightweight desktop environment like Xfce and LXDE
PeaZip: a cross-platform archive manager. In addition to Linux, this tool also supports other operating systems including Windows and macOS.

2- Command line tools and commands:

Typical commands for packing under Linux are

zip -- for .zip files

Example:

zip -r targetfile sourcedirectory

tar -- for .tar and .tar.gz files

Example (creates a .tar.gz file):

tar cvzf targetfile.tar.gz sourcedirectory

bzip2 -- for .bz2 files

Example:

bzip2 sourcefile

Unpacking files

How to unpack files depends on their suffix:

.tar.gz

unpack with the command

tar xvzf archive.tar.gz