Compress
tar -czvf foldername.tar.gz foldername
Uncompress
# gzip tar file (.tgz or .tar.gz)
tar xvzf file-1.0.tar.gz
# bzip2 tar file (.tbz or .tar.bz2)
tar xvjf file-1.0.tar.bz2
# tar file (.tar)
tar xvf file-1.0.tar
Zip folder
zip -r file.zip folder