Zipping is the act of compressing a folder or files into one file (.zip) which can then be unpacked to return to the many files again. This is done for many reasons like organization, download management, space saving or archiving.

Here is how to zip and unzip on Ubuntu.

First step is installing Zip and unzip this is done with:

sudo apt install zip unzip

Zip

To zip a folder the command is simply:

zip -r output input

so

zip -r folder.zip folder/to/zip

or

zip -r /save/zip/here/folder.zip folder/to/zip/

You can add a password by using -e after the -r option. You will then be prompted to set a password.

Unzip

Unzipping a zip file is a very similar process, you use unzip

unzip yourfile.zip -d folder/to/place/it