And yeah, better use a compression format specifically for Unix file-systems when on Linux (so using the tar command, with the supported compression methods).And you can also use SquashFS, which allows you to mount the file-system, so you don't have to strain your disk with extracting the files.
I even have some of my good old games in sfs files, which actually speeds up the loading when using a modern processor.
Though you have to link-out the save-files.
Let's see... Lords2.sfs (55MB)... extracted: 107MB!
So almost half the space... as it uses .WAV files for sound, which is very inefficient.
Anyway, good that you pointed out the file-attribute problem!