Perhaps you might also be interested in learning how to unzip files in Linux. If you want to unzip the files to a different folder, click on the Extract To option. Choose the appropriate location and click Select to extract the file to that location.
On Linux, BSD, Illumos, and even Mac OS, the tar command is already installed for you. Snaps were developed by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to package and distribute software focusing on security, sandboxing, and ease of installation and updates. how much do i need to invest to start out dropshipping They were officially introduced in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, released in April 2016.
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As a result, we recommend sticking to free (but trustworthy) tools or simply using the command line. The tar format is just a format, and it’s an open format, so it can be created by more than just one tool. If the directory does not exist, tar will create it automatically. Ubuntu versions are usually named using an alliterative adjective and an animal name, both starting with the same letter. Canonical released its first official version of the OS, Ubuntu 4.10, codenamed ‘Warty Warthog’ in October 2004. Canonical released its first official version of the OS, Ubuntu 4.10, codenamed ‘Warty Warthog’ in October 2004.
tar: README: Not found in archive
WinRAR is a popular file compression & archive utility software. It allows users to create, view, and extract files in various archive formats, including its native .RAR format as well as other common formats like .ZIP, .7z, ISO, .TAR, and more. In this article, you learned how to extract or unzip tar.gz files in Linux using the tar command and other tools. You also learned how to list the contents of a tar.gz file and how to create your own tar.gz archives. In this article, you will learn how to extract or unzip tar.gz files in Linux using the tar command and other tools.
Where most operating systems make it easy to extract and create .zip files, the same can’t really be said for .tar files — at least not in ways that are easy to notice. From videos to entire software packages, many files are compressed and stored using the .tar.gz format. While extracting a .tar.gz file isn’t quite as easy as unzipping a .zip, it’s still pretty straightforward. The Dolphin file manager offers a feature to autodetect whether the files extracted from an archive are contained in a directory or if a new directory needs to be created for them. I use this option so that when I extract files from a tarbomb, they remain tidy and contained. Some of the most popular archive managers for Linux are File Roller, Ark, Xarchiver, and PeaZip.
However, there are also many third-party tools you can install for a more user-friendly experience. You can create your own compressed .tar files using compression utilities such as gzip. Gzip is one of the most popular and available options, especially since it comes built in to most Linux distributions and macOS. Where .zip files consist of many individually compressed files, .tar files are compressed as a single package, leaving its files uncompressed.
Tarbombs are useful for patches and software installers; it’s just a matter of knowing when to use them and when to avoid them. If you want to create your own tar.gz file, you can use the tar command with the -c option, which tells tar to create a new archive. You also need to use the -z option to compress the archive with gzip, and the -f option to specify the file name. The -v option makes the tar command more verbose and prints the details of each file, such as permissions, owner, size, and modification date. If you only want to see the file names, you can omit the -v option.
Simply add a space-separated list of the files you want to extract. This command extracts (-x) the file (-f) specified (in this case, filename.tar.gz) to the current directory. Note that this command also works with other common compression formats such as .tar.bz2. Technical details aside, all you need to remember is that .zip files are more accessible but less space-efficient, while .tar files are less accessible but more space-efficient. As a result, one isn’t necessarily better than the other — it’s all a matter of application. Most Linux and BSD desktops come with a graphical archive utility.
The aforementioned command will extract the archive.tar.gz file to the /Downloads folder. It also integrates with the Windows Explorer context menu, which enables users to create and extract archives directly from the right-click menu. You can easily extract .tar.gz files using third-party tools like 7 zip and Winrar on the Windows system. You can notice in the above image that the archive files are extracted in the same working directory. But it does not compress the data, which results in a larger file size compared to compressed formats. You can easily unzip the resulting .tar.gz file with the decompress (-d) option.
How to Extract or Unzip tar.gz Files Using Bash on Windows 10 or 11
For a more detailed explanation on how the tar command works, be sure to read our guide to compressing and extracting files in the Linux Terminal. The tar command is extremely powerful, and you can do things like list or search for files in a tar archive, or extract a single file. And now you can use the 7-Zip File Manager to open, view, or extract files from tar.gz and other archives.
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Though we mostly focus on .tar.gz files, check out the end of the article for some quick tips on extracting .tar files in other formats. Just like the more familiar .zip files, .tar files compress large files into a single package, making it easier to store and send them through email, servers, and so on. As a result, it has become a common file extension for many open-source software packages and other resources. People new to the tar format usually equate it to a .zip file, but a tar archive is notably not compressed. The tar format only creates a container for files, but the files can be compressed with separate utilities.
You will also learn how to list the contents of a tar.gz file and how to create your own tar.gz archives. Though both .zip and .tar.gz archive and compress files, they do so in different ways. In other words, .zip is a collection of compressed files, while .tar.gz is a compressed collection of files. While every tar.gz file is a .tar archive, not every .gz is a .tar file. The .gz extension represents the gzip compression format, which can be applied to almost any file format to compress data and save space. Unlike Windows’ convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for unzipping .zip files, you need to use the tar utility through the command line.
- Therefore, knowing how to open or untar tar.gz files is very useful.
- You can also add the verbose output option (-v) to provide detailed listings, including dates, securities/permissions, and more.
- You may also be interested in learning about the best WinZip alternatives to compress files.
Let’s explore the extraction process for both Linux & Windows platforms. Where commands have little (if any) room for typos or omissions, many common errors are the result of small mistakes, misspellings, or incorrect formats. Thankfully, unless you’re somehow missing your tar or gzip utility, most common errors are very easy to fix. Though gzip is the most common compression utility, it’s not the only one. As you might imagine, using a different compression utility on a .tar file will result in a different double extension. Some common examples include .tar.bz2 (bzip2), .tar.br (Brotli), and .tar.zst (zstd), among many others.
The command extracts files to a new directory called example1, which is located in the current directory. This is because most versions of tar allow both gnu and bsd style options (simplistically, gnu requires a hyphen, bsd doesn’t). If you’ve received a tarball from a friend or a software project, you can extract it in either your GUI desktop or in a shell. In a GUI, right-click the archive you want to extract and select “Extract.”
People new to the .tar format usually equate it to a .zip archive, but a tar archive is not compressed. Tar collected all the files into one package, but the files can be compressed with separate utilities. A GZ file is nothing but a file compressed using the gzip algorithm. You can use the official GNU gzip utility to extract the content of the compressed archive file. If the file you’re looking at is a TAR.GZ, using either tar or 7-Zip to extract the file will be a much simpler choice.