If you plan to distribute and store .tar.gz files on your website, Kinsta’s managed hosting services can help make the most of your space. However, while tools like 7-Zip are free, many more “robust” solutions are only available for a price after a trial period. As a result, we recommend sticking to free (but trustworthy) tools or simply using the command line. To access the Windows command line, search for “command prompt” or “cmd” in the search bar. Right-click the first result and select the “Run as administrator” option. Once you’ve done this successfully, you’ll notice that the icon for tar.gz files will change to a 7-Zip icon.
Unpack is a simple third-party Bash wrapper script that allows you to unzip almost any type of modern archive format in Linux. Unlike tar and Xarchiver, south korea cryptocurrency it aims to be a simple, single command solution to extract Tar.gz files. While the file manager in most distributions can work with tar.gz, there are cases where you need a more powerful tool to do the job.
Tarbombs are useful for patches and software installers; it’s just a matter of knowing when to use them and when to avoid them. To extract all the files from a directory within a tar file use the following command. Note that the path is wrapped in quotation marks what is an initial coin offering because there are spaces in the path.
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 ecn forex brokers 2023 best ecn brokers for us clients️ a compressed collection of files. If you’re using a graphical Linux desktop, you could also use the file-compression utility or file manager included with your desktop to create or extract .tar files. On Windows, you can extract and create .tar archives with the free 7-Zip utility.
How to Extract Files From a .tar.bz2 or .tar.gz File on Linux
Likewise, we don’t need the -j option to list the files in a tar.bz2 file. If we list the files in the Download directory we will see that another directory called Guitar Songs has been created. But with .zip being the easier of the two to use, why use .tar in the first place? The next section shows how .tar comes with a few extra features that make it the better compression format for certain files and applications. A user-friendly way to extract files from a .tar.gz archive is via a Graphical User Interface (GUI).
Xarchiver is a highly flexible graphical program that can unzip archives and portable package formats in Linux. You may want to extract the contents of the archive to a specific directory. You can do so by appending the -C switch to the end of the command. For example, the following command will extract the contents of the archive.tar.gz file to the /tmp directory.
Using the command line (cmd)
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. 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.
Using third-party tools
- Knowing how to unzip a .tar.gz file allows users to extract and access the archives’ contents efficiently.
- This error usually occurs when a .tar has been saved as a .gz despite having never been compressed using the gzip utility.
- Most Linux and BSD desktops come with a graphical archive utility.
- If you believe the question would be on-topic on another Stack Exchange site, you can leave a comment to explain where the question may be able to be answered.
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. 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.
Unlike Windows’ convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for unzipping .zip files, you 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. 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.
Can Xarchiver selectively extract tar.gz files instead of overwriting them?
Run the info tar command at the shell to view the tar command’s detailed information page. Once you have an archive, you can extract it with the tar command. The following command will extract the contents of archive.tar.gz to the current directory.
