On Fri, 30 May 1997, sidhu saranjit s wrote:

Gzip is a utility created by GNU.  It is freeware, and is mostly used on UNIX 
systems although there are ports for other operating systems, namely DOS.  
 
I would suspect that gzip is a much better compression utility for text than 
pkzip although I cannot corroborate this.  
 
Anyone want to comment on this ?

  Sure.  Having Mac, PC, and UNIX administration experience makes this
easy.  The defacto standards for all three platforms are as follows:

PC:   .zip  (Either pkzip 204g or winzip)
MAC:  .sit.hqx  (Compression/text encoding due to unusual file system.)
UNIX: .Z (compress/uncompress) is universal, but,
      .gz (gzip/gunzip) is better and free.
      Note that neither of the above can do directories.. you need to use
      a .tar directory for that.

There is a freeware/shareware unzip for all three systems.
MACs need Stuffit Deluxe 4.0 for .Z and .gz (Commercial)
PCs can use WinZip (Shareware) for .gz and .Z

If you have to compress, then you are best off at using .zip for cross
platform compatibility.