Add 'GNU/Linux equivalents of WIM format' section to README

[wimlib] / README

diff --git a/README b/README
index 0f15a36fe4279c2a034d4c1dda5bcbef899d1ecf..4d1e1014c73d7c5d58a53f851358f6d0c68b3745 100644 (file)
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -236,9 +236,8 @@ documentation.
 
 The code in ntfs-apply.c and ntfs-capture.c uses the NTFS-3g library, which is a
 library for reading and writing to NTFS filesystems (the filesystem used by
-recent versions of Windows).  Additionally, the code in ntfs-3g-security.c is
-mostly copied from NTFS-3g, but I'm hoping to get rid of this file eventually.
-See http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information.
+recent versions of Windows).  See
+http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information.
 
 lzx-decomp.c, the code to decompress WIM file resources that are compressed
 using LZX compression, is originally based on code from the cabextract project
@@ -265,6 +264,40 @@ You can see the documentation about Microsoft's version of the imagex program at
 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749447(v=ws.10).aspx, so you can
 see how it compares.
 
+                     GNU/Linux equivalents of WIM format
+
+What's the equivalent way to capture the filesystem of a GNU/Linux operating
+system into an archive file?  You have a few options:
+
+SquashFS:
+       SquashFS (http://squashfs.sourceforge.net/) provides a compressed,
+       read-only filesystem for Linux, and it's probably the closest equivalent
+       of the WIM format and better designed.  Although you can't mount
+       SquashFS read-write, when wimlib does this for WIM files it's really an
+       illusion since the WIM isn't actually modified until the image is
+       unmounted.  Multiple top-level images in SquashFS files are not
+       supported, although nothing stops you from just putting each image in a
+       separate directory.
+
+FSArchiver:
+       FSArchiver (http://www.fsarchiver.org/Main_Page) is not widely used, but
+       it appears to have some features quite similar to the WIM format.
+
+Tar:
+       The well-known tar format can usually capture a UNIX filesystem just
+       fine, and compressing the tar file produces a good compression ratio
+       (better than WIM, especially if using XZ compression), but there is no
+       support for random access, file deduplication, multiple images per
+       archive, or extended attributes.
+
+Zip:
+       Zip shares some features with WIM but is not designed to store entire
+       filesystems.
+
+7z:
+       The 7z format has some nice features but is unfortunately not designed
+       with UNIX in mind.
+
                                MORE INFORMATION
 
 See the manual pages for `imagex', the manual pages for the subcommands of