The standard archival program for Unix-like operating systems including Linux and Mac OS X is Tar, so called because Tar was originally used to store backups on tape drives (Tape ARchive).

All Linux operating systems have the Tar command installed by default, so your employees do not all need to use the same Linux distribution.

One of the most common programs on Linux systems for packaging files is the venerable tar. tar is short for tape archive, and originally, it would archive your files to a tape device. Now, you're more ...

Compressing and Decompressing Directories Compressing a Directory To compress an entire directory, you can use the tar command in combination with Zstandard: tar --zstd -cf example.tar.zst example/ ...

From what I googled it seems tar thinks you're using multiple of c or x t and the like switches which are exclusive. I would suggest tar cvzf etc.tar.gz /etc without any filters.