From 39228731033bb55d8e4a0dd31250e62939873a90 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Eric Biggers Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:37:40 -0500 Subject: [PATCH] Add 'GNU/Linux equivalents of WIM format' section to README --- README | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 34 insertions(+) diff --git a/README b/README index 801cd215..4d1e1014 100644 --- a/README +++ b/README @@ -264,6 +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 -- 2.43.0