Entropy quantities are connected with the 'degree of compactness' of compact or precompact spaces, and so are appropriate tools for investigating linear and compact operators between Banach spaces. The main intention of this Tract is to study the relations between compactness and other analytical properties, e.g. approximability and eigenvalue sequences, of such operators. The authors present many generalized results, some of which have not appeared in the literature before. In the final chapter, the authors demonstrate that, to a certain extent, the geometry of Banach spaces can also be...