Jasen Betts wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 JB> Hi Roy.

 RJT> The major difference between tar and typical "modern" archivers
 RJT> that you mention are that tar doesn't depend on the destination
 RJT> device containing a filesystem.  I don't quite understand why
 RJT> that should be,  since there seem to be an abundance of
 RJT> filesystems for all sorts of other uses,  but maybe it's
 RJT> historical

 JB> it was desined to convert a filesystem into a stream of packet that
 JB> could be recorded onto a tape. the name tar is taken from  Tape
 JB> ARchiver basically a version of ar designed specially for
 JB> reading/writing tape.

I knew that.

 JB> ar is no longer used to archive files on filesystems, except as the
 JB> tool for object code into libraries

Never looked at ar,  and wasn't aware of this part.

 RJT> There was one article in the October issue of Linux Journal,  and
 RJT> at least 3-4 articles in the (free online) LinuxFocus pubication.
 RJT>  There might be more,  but I have a whole pile of Linux Gazette
 RJT> here to work through,  and have put them aside to deal with other
 RJT> stuff for the past couple of months

 JB> I know someone who mentioend wanting to give away unlicenced copies
 JB> of photoshop... I think the GIMP might be a safer product for
 JB> that... 

Agreed.

 JB> but I haven't looked at it much.

I know that what I've wanted it to do,  it could do for me,  though
sometimes it took a bit of figuring out to get to where I understood how to
do it...

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