Alternatives to GNU Tar
The GNU command-line tool for creating, extracting, updating and listing tar archives. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
GNU Tar
The GNU command-line tool for creating, extracting, updating and listing tar archives.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as GNU Tar.
bsdtar (libarchive)
Command-line archivers built on libarchive that read and write tar, zip, cpio, ISO and more.
bsdtar is a BSD-licensed tar built on libarchive that also reads zip, rar and ISO and runs on Windows, though some options differ from GNU tar.
ouch
Command-line tool that compresses and extracts archives without format-specific flags.
ouch is an MIT-licensed tool that creates and extracts tar, zip and compressed formats by file name without format-specific flags, but wraps only common formats.
Disk ARchive (dar)
Command-line archiver and backup tool with compression, encryption and differential archives.
Disk ARchive uses its own format with built-in compression, encryption and differential backups, but needs more setup than GNU Tar.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
GNU Gzip
The GNU command-line compression program that creates and decompresses .gz files.
XZ Utils
The standard command-line tool for creating and reading .xz files.
Zstandard
Meta's compression tool that hits near-zlib ratios at far higher speed, now used across Linux and modern filesystems.
pigz
A parallel implementation of gzip that uses multiple CPU cores to compress data faster.
pixz
A parallel, indexing xz compressor that allows random access into compressed tar.xz archives.
archivemount
A FUSE filesystem that mounts tar, zip and other archives so they can be browsed like folders.
