Linux File Compression (gzip Vs bz2 Vs xz)

Simple Summary:-

Gzip Pros:-
>> Low Compression Time
>> Low Decompression Time
>> Gzip is compatible with most browsers since 2000

Cons:-
>> Very poor Compression Size
>> Very slow Compression Speed
>> Very slow Decompression Speed

Bzip2 Pros:-
>> Bz2 is compatible mostly for FastDL/Redirects FTPs for SRCDS servers
>> Very fast Decompression Speed

Cons:-
>> Very high Decompression Time
>> Compression rate isn't significantly improved compared to gzip

Xz Pros:-
>> Xz compresses zips approximately 34% more than gzip
>> Fast Decompression Speed
>> Xz is compatible when a Tarball archive .tar file is compressed as a tar.xz Linux zip archive.

Cons:-
>> Very high Compression Time when XZ compression is set at a higher Compression Level.

https://www.rootusers.com/gzip-vs-bz...ce-comparison/

In terms of availability, 7zip is widely available across UNIX (Linux/BSD/MacOS) and Windows systems. Therefore a zip file is highly portable. xz and 7zip are known to have a better compression algorithm than gzip, but use more memory and time to compress/decompress. when backing up I would recommend tar.7z as it has the highest compression rate saving you space but uses an extra program (7zip). .tar.gz will be larger files and do the same job, you could also use bzip (.tar.bz/bz2) although i'm not sure if that would suit you better as I use gzip or 7zip