When comparing tar vs Xarchiver, the Slant community recommends tar for most people. In the question“What are the best archivers on Linux?” tar is ranked 5th while Xarchiver is ranked 8th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Works from command-line
Pro Can show a file list without loading the whole archive
For 7zip-files (perhaps other types too) while File Roller cannot do this.
Cons
Con No compression
Tar (tape archiver) was mainly made for tape drives, so it has handy features like split archives. However, it does not feature any compression, so you have to compress the files again with gunzip or bunzip.
Con Segfaults when creating large archives
When creating large archives it crashes and doesn't show you any helpful message (unless you started it from the terminal you will get something like "[1] 14858 segmentation fault (core dumped) xarchiver").
Con Doesn't show a progress UI while it's creating an archive
You have to "guess" when it's done.
Con Not in active development
Xarchiver has only one maintainer and it seems he's not working on it actively.