The tar program takes one or more files and “wraps” them into a self-contained file. Many of the downloadable Linux/Unix files found on the internet are compressed using a tar.gz format. Therefore, knowing how to open or untar tar.gz files is very useful. This example uses example1.tar.gz in the Home directory.

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. From videos to entire software packages, many files are compressed and stored using the .tar.gz format.

So we can list the content of the archive without actually extracting everything by using -tz argument where -t is for –list i.e. list the contents of the archive. Extract all content with tar command, extract a specific file and list the files without extracting them. Since .tar.gz compresses multiple files all at once, it can take advantage of similarities between individual files to save on space. Generally speaking, a collection of files archived and compressed as a .tar.gz will be more space-efficient (i.e., smaller) than the same collection compressed as a .zip. Again, the above commands will extract to the current working directory by default. You can use the -C option to extract to a different directory (in this case, /home/user/files).

1. You can create your own compressed .tar files using compression utilities such as gzip.
2. Some operating systems give packages like “sudo”, “gnome” as dependent packages.
3. It signifies the strong sense of community and interconnectedness at the core of Ubuntu’s philosophy.

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. If that’s not entirely clear, don’t worry. As a result, one isn’t necessarily better than the other — it’s all a matter of application. The most often used algorithm for compressing tar files is Gzip.

While extracting a .tar.gz file isn’t quite as easy as unzipping a .zip, it’s still pretty straightforward. This error usually occurs when a .tar has been saved as a .gz despite having never been compressed using the gzip utility. Unlike Windows’ convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for unzipping .zip files, you’ll need to use the tar utility through the command line. However, there are also many third-party tools you can install for a more user-friendly experience. 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.

Is .tar.gz The Same As .zip?

By convention, the name of a tar archive compressed with gzip becomes .tar.gz or .tgz. To use gunzip, the gzip package is installed. In fact, tar and gzip packages come pre-installed on many operating systems.

Example-3: List files inside gz archive without extraction

Similar to the previous error, this error occurs when an archive was saved as a .tar despite not being a .tar archive. You can also add the verbose output option (-v) to provide detailed listings, including dates, securities/permissions, and more. Otherwise, keep reading to learn how to unzip ufx universal flashing s6a 1140mm x 1180mm .tar.gz files in Linux, macOS, and Windows. Ubuntu Core is a minimalistic and immutable version explicitly designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) and embedded systems. The name “Tar” stands for “Tape Archiver” because it was used to place data on storage tapes when tar was invented.

Thankfully, you don’t need to be a 1960s computer technician to use and extract .tar files – nor do modern .tar files even have anything to do with old computers. You can open most .tar.gz files using the tar command built in to Linux, macOS, and Windows 10. If you’re not comfortable with the terminal or command line, third-party tools such as 7-Zip offer a more user-friendly how to buy gmx alternative. In this example, the user tried to extract the file titled “FILE” from filename.tar.gz. However, tar was unable to find FILE within .tar.gz, meaning that the user either misspelled the name or that the file simply doesn’t exist in filename.tar.gz. Another common cause of errors is case sensitivity, where Linux treats “FILE” and “file” as two separate entities.

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. 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.

How to Extract tar.gz File in Linux by Using the Command Line

Here I have a wrapper archive which internally contains 2 nested gzip archives. Snaps were developed by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to package and distribute software focusing on security, sandboxing, and ease of installation and updates. They were officially introduced in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, released in April 2016. Ubuntu is a Southern African philosophy and term originating from South Africa and Zimbabwe. The -C option is used to specify a different directory other than the current working directory.

For more information and to schedule a live demo, contact a hosting expert from Kinsta today. While there are many tools to choose from, the most popular include 7-Zip and WinZip. While slightly different, they are quite lightweight and offer a much simpler alternative to using the command line. 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.

In this guide, you will learn how to extract or unzip .tar.gz files in Linux. We learned how to install packages according to Linux distributions. We have 2 ways to open tar.gz files (tar, gunzip). Let’s make it more understandable net framework wikipedia with examples. It’s easy to get confused when navigating between .tar, .tar.gz, and .gz – not to mention zipping and unzipping them. Here are a few frequently asked questions we commonly hear from users working with .tar.gz files.

With the command prompt open, use the appropriate commands to change the current working directory (cd) to the location of the .tar.gz file you want to unzip. Alternatively, you can also specify a source and destination file path when using the tar utility. Note that this command will throw an error unless you specify the exact filename listed in the .tar file. As we’ll cover more in the next section, you can verify file names by listing contents with the tar -tf filename.tar.gz command. For sending and storing, both .zip and .tar.gz files will allow you to send relatively large packages as a single file. However, there are some pretty major differences when it comes to accessing data within the files and the compression efficiency.

Of course, that’s not to say .tar files are some kind of “lesser” format than .zip. Rather, they both accomplish the same task (file compression) in the same way. 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 user-friendly way to extract files from a .tar.gz archive is via a Graphical User Interface (GUI). A GUI is more suitable for beginners than a command-line tool.

We saw in the last example that by default tar will extract content into the current folder. If we want to specify the destination directory where the content should be extracted and kept then we need to use -C or –directory argument. As you can see, the contents of the archive are successfully extracted to the current folder.

Some operating systems give packages like “sudo”, “gnome” as dependent packages. Therefore, it may not be possible to remove them. So how to install tar and gzip(gunzip) packages? You can find the answer to this question below.