Although 7-Zip is available for both Windows and Linux, only the Windows port has a GUI front end. This means, by default, using 7-Zip in Linux requires the use of commands. Normally this is fine, but the 7-Zip commands can be fairly confusing (even to the experienced user). Fortunately 7-Zip does integrate well with the GNOME and KDE desktops. And it has a front end available. This front end is Q7z and was not created nor is maintained by the makers of 7-Zip.

In this article I will show you how to install and use the Q7Z front end for 7-zip on Linux.

Installation

Although you will find various packages on the Q7Z download page, you should avoid the pre-packaged binaries. Instead you will want to download the Autopackage File, which should work on just about any Linux distribution. Once you have downloaded that file you will need to open up a terminal and follow these steps;

1. Change to the directory holding the Autopackage File.
2. Give the file executable permissions with the command chmod u+x q7z-XXX-package Where XXX is the release number.
3. Issue the command sudo ./q7z-XXX-package Where XXX is the release number.

The installer will begin and walk you through the process. The only interaction necessary is for you to enter your sudo password twice. The Autopackage installer will automatically download all of the dependencies for you and run the full install process. When the installer closes you can then run Q7Z with the command Q7Z.pyw.

Usage

Figure 1

When you fire up the Q7Z tool, the main window should be fairly obvious to figure out. But just in case, let’s take a look at the process of compressing a folder.

Step 1: Click on the Locations tab.

Step 2: Click on the “Dir” button.

Step 3: Navigate to the folder you want to compress and click Open.

Step 4: If you want the compressed archive to be saved in a different location click the check box for “Destination” and then supply an alternate destination for your archive.

Step 5: Go back to the Specifications tab and specify the type of compression you want and any other options you might want to use. From this tab you can also create a self extracting archive (.exe file) as well as password protect your compressed files.

Step 6: Click the Create button.

Depending upon the size of the archive, the process could take some time.

Extracting

You can also extract archives with this same tool. The process is very similar to the creation of archive, only you work in reverse and you are using the Extract tab. The extraction process can extract the same file types that are supported with the compression (zip, 7z, bunzip2, tar, gzip, XZ).

Final thoughts

If you aren’t happy with your compression tool, you might want to give Q7Z and 7-zip a go. It offers solid compression, password protection, varied compression levels. and much more – all in an easy to use GUI interface. And if you’re not terribly happy with G7Z, 7-zip does integrate with Nautilus, so you can use that instead.

In this article I am going to de-mystify Linux file compression and archiving for you. By the end of the article you’ll be compressing and decompressing files in your sleep. And, as a bonus, you’ll know how to do this both via command line and GUI.

Compression versus archiving

The difference between compression and archiving is simple: Compression makes a file (or directory) smaller and Archiving takes many seperate files (such as a directory containing sub-directories and/or files) and turns it into a single file. You can have a compressed archive (such as .tar.gz or .tgz) and you can even have an archive of compressed files (such as a directory that contains a bunch of compressed files). But how do you know what are compressed files verses archived files? Here’s a list of file extensions and what they are.

.tar – This is an uncompressed Tar archive file. This type of archive is unpacked with the command tar xvf file.tar.

.tgz – This is a compressed Tar archive file. This type of archive is decompressed and unpacked with the command tar xvzf file.tgz.

.gz – This is a file compressed with the gzip program. This type of file is decompressed with the command gunzip file.gz.

.zip – This is a compressed file. This type of file is decompressed with the command unzip file.zip

.bz2 – This is a compressed file. This type of file is decompressed with the command bunzip2 file.bz2.

Which compression to use?

Of the three compression utilities (bzip2, zip, and gzip) the tool that will result in the most compression (the smallest file) is bzip2. The only disadvantage to bzip2 is that the algorithm uses more processor to complete than does the other utilities.

If you are sharing your compressed files with Windows users your best bet is to use zip for compression. Although there are tools (such as Stuffit Deluxe for Windows) that can handle bz2 files, the default supported is .zip.

Using the GUI

If you are a fan of the GUI (and who isn’t these days?) you will be glad to know that most all Linux file managers can handle compressed and archived files. In both Nautilus (GNOME) and Dolphin (KDE) you can simply right click a compressed, archived, or compressed archive file and select Extract. Both file managers also offer compression and archiving options when you right click a file or directory.

Final thoughts

Working with compression and archiving is very simple with the Linux operating system. You have plenty of options in both the command line and the GUI worlds.

Users with T1 connections, that is 1.44 Mbps would have to wait 9.28 seconds. The figures are of course only valid if they do not use part of their download speed for other transfers at the same time. The first thing that I decided to do was to enable gzip compression in the WordPress options in the reading tab. Before I enabled it I did a quick check that my server was actually able to gzip by using the simple phpinfo() command.

I tested the result and the page size went down almost 35%! It went down 58K to 108K total. The time users with ISDN had to wait before the full page is loaded was reduced by almost 4 seconds from 18.55 seconds to 14.80 seconds. The loading time for T1 users was reduced by 0.51 seconds to 8.77 seconds in total.

I still did not apply the optimization that Paul suggested and that is what I intended to do next. His suggestion was to gzip compress the css file as well to reduce loading time even further. I found a reference to a nice WordPress plugin in the comments of his post. The plugin is called css-compress. It just has to be activated in the plugin tab in WordPress. The advantage of using css-compress over Paul’s method is that css compress compresses all css files even those of third parties such as those from advertisers or other plugins.

Another check reported that the total size of my blogs frontpage was again reduced by almost 10k from 108K to 98K. Loading time was again reduced by 1.17 seconds for ISDN users and 0.65 seconds for users with a T1 connection.

I was not able to witness any negative effects on my blogs design, the functions or server load. Sure it uses a little bit processing power but this should only be a problem for weak shared hosts.

You can check the loading speed of websites using the nice script available at website optimization.