Do you use Tar to archive your files and folders and find it a bit slow? Well, you’re in luck because today I’m introducing Arx. It’s a next-generation archiving tool developed by the talented Jubako, which will amaze you with its performance and features.
Arx places speed at the core of its operation thanks to its highly optimized algorithm, allowing it to process your files at a lightning-fast pace, leaving Tar far behind. For example, to access an individual file in an archive containing the entire Linux source code, Arx is up to 5,692 times faster than Tar! The larger the archive, the greater the difference.

But speed is not Arx’s only advantage as it also offers direct random access to archived files. This allows you to retrieve any file from your archive in the blink of an eye, without having to decompress it entirely. It means less time wasted navigating through monolithic archives. And since time is money, you’ll be rich in no time ^^.
The commands are simple to grasp, allowing you to create, update, and extract your archives without having to deal with obscure options. Moreover, Arx is full of little tricks that will save you precious time, such as adding files to an existing archive without having to recreate it entirely or extracting only the files modified since the last archiving.
The tool is also resource-efficient as it allows for compact archives without compromising on quality. Your hard drive will thank you and you’ll be able to store even more!!
If you’re interested in testing it, it’s available on Github here or you can install it with Cargo (yes, it’s written in Rust):
cargo install arx
Then, to start creating an archive, run the following command:
arx create -o my_archive.arx -r my_directory
This will generate a file containing the directory my_archive.arxmy_directory
.
To extract (decompress) an archive, use the command:
arx extract my_archive.arx -C my_output_directory
And if you want to list the contents (the list of files) of the archive, run:
arx list my_archive.arx
To access the content of a single file, you can also use the following commands:
arx dump my_archive.arx my_directory/path/to/my_file > my_file
# or
arx dump my_archive.arx my_directory/path/to/my_file -o my_file
If you’re on Linux, you also have the option to mount the archive using fuse:
mkdir mount_point
arx mount my_archive.arx mount_point
Note that this will be running until you unmount my_archive.arxmount_point
.
And to convert a zip into an arx archive, use the command:
zip2arx -o my_archive.arx my_archive_zip.zip
Similarly, to convert a tar archive into an arx archive, run:
tar2arx -o my_archive.arx my_archive_tar.tar.gz
There you go, now you know everything!