How to create a zip file compatible with Windows under Linux

Try with:

zip -9 -y -r -q file.zip folder/

• -9 Indicates the slowest compression speed (optimal compression, ignores the suffix list)
• -y Store symbolic links as such in the zip archive, instead of compressing and storing the file referred to by the link
• -r Travel the directory structure recursively
• -q Quiet mode

7zip is an open source compression tool that works on Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, BeOS, DOS, Amiga and Windows.

I would highly recommend it based on the windows version.

It supports

packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR

Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.

zip -Z sets the compression option. -Z store is the most trivial one, as it doesn't compress at all. This is useful when you're using zip as an alternative for tar, or when troubleshooting. In this case you should try to see if an uncompressed archive is usable from Windows. If that is usable, you know that you'll have to pick a non-default compression option.