Parallel Gzip Tar
Old school Tar
Linux users get used to compress with tar command.
tar old school example
# Compress
tar -czf file.tar.gz file1 file2
# List
tar -tf file.tar.gz
# Extract
tar -xf file.tar.gz
 
Pigz
For small file, don't bother. But when compressing takes time, here are some hint to speed up the process.
Most of us have multi core cpu. Use pigz. pigz is equivalent to gzip but it distributes the task to several threads.
parallel tar example
 
# Compress
tar -c file1 file2 | pigz -5 > out.tar.gz
 
# Compress ( Use the tar flag "--use-compress-program=" to tell tar what compression program to use. )
tar -cf out.tar.gz --use-compress-program=pigz file1 file2
 
# List all file contained in an archive. This process is also multithreaded.
tar -tf file.tar.gz --use-compress-program=pigz
 
# Extract
tar -xf out.tar.gz --use-compress-program=pigz
 
Build you own tar
One other option is to build tar from source with specific flag in the configure script. pigz use used instead of gzip.
compile tar
cd tar-1.28
./configure --with-gzip=pigz
make