But with .zip being the easier of the two to use, why use .tar in the first place? As we’ll see in the next section, .tar comes with a few extra features that make it the better compression format for certain files and applications. 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. It also integrates with the Windows Explorer context menu, which enables users to create and extract archives directly from the right-click menu. When the archive is extracted, these attributes are restored.
- Gzip is one of the most popular and available options, especially since it comes built in to most Linux distributions and macOS.
- Some of the most popular archive managers for Linux are File Roller, Ark, Xarchiver, and PeaZip.
- While every tar.gz file is a .tar archive, not every .gz is a .tar file.
- In this article, you learned how to extract or unzip tar.gz files in Linux using the tar command and other tools.
- 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.
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. 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. 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.
How to Unzip .tar.gz in Linux via Terminal
Alternatively, you can also specify a source and destination file path when using the tar utility. It’s often useful to list the contents of a .tar.gz file without having to unzip the entire archive. 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. 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.
That means users can download and use it for free during a trial period. Also, its trial version does not have time limitations, and users can still use it even after the trial period has expired, with occasional reminders to purchase the license. These files can be used in incremental backup strategies – where only new or modified files 5 biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world you should know about are added to the archive. Gzip compression reduces the overall file size, which makes it more efficient for distribution, backup, and storage purposes. It just bundles files & directories together while preserving their file structure and metadata. This means it takes all the specified files and puts them together into one container.
To extract a tar.gz file using the tar command, you need to use the -x option, which tells tar to extract the files from the archive. You also need to use the -z option to indicate that the archive is compressed with gzip, and the -f option to specify the file name. Learn how to extract or unzip tar.gz files in Linux using the tar command and other tools.
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This error occurs when trying to extract specific files or directories from a .tar.gz file using tar. A “.tar” file is a collection of files compressed into a single file or archive. Short for “Tape ARchive,” the name “TAR” is a throwback to when files were stored on magnetic tape drives. Whether you prefer command-line tools or graphical file archivers, the extraction process is pretty simple.
View a List of Files within an Archive
There are several ways to extract or unzip a tar.gz file in Linux, depending on the tool you have available or prefer to use. The most common and widely supported method is to use the tar command, which can handle various compression formats, including gzip. Before extracting a tar.gz file, you may want to see what files and directories it contains.
Tar collected all the files into one package, but the files can be compressed with separate utilities. Some of the most popular archive managers for Linux are File Roller, Ark, Xarchiver, and PeaZip. They offer more features and options than the file managers, such as creating, modifying, encrypting, and splitting archives. You can install them from your distribution’s package manager or software center.
7-Zip is a free and open-source tool with high compression ratios & supports a wide range of archive formats. It offers AES-256 encryption to protect sensitive data within archives. Users can utilize the 7-zip command-line interface for automated & scripted extraction tasks. The most often used algorithm for compressing tar files is Gzip. By convention, the name of a tar archive compressed with gzip becomes .tar.gz or .tgz.
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. The extraction method is precisely the same for tar files that have compression, such as.tar.gz,.tar.bz2, and others. To unzip the .tar.gz files, you’ll need to use specific commands and tools depending on your operating system. Let’s explore the extraction process for both Linux & Windows platforms. People new to the .tar format usually equate it to a .zip archive, but a tar archive is not compressed.
DEB is the native and most common package format Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions use. It contains compiled binaries, libraries, configuration files, and metadata required to install and manage software on a Ubuntu system. Perhaps you might also be interested in learning how to unzip files in Linux. The -v option makes the tar command more verbose and prints the details of each file, such as permissions, owner, size, and modification date.
You can also select the files and directories you want to extract and the destination directory where you want to extract them. 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. You can open most .tar.gz files using the tar command built in to Linux, macOS, and Windows 10.
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. On the other hand, Windows users can rely on third-party file archiver tools tradeo » what do customers think of this company like 7-zip or WinRAR to effortlessly extract files. In this guide, you will learn how to extract or unzip .tar.gz files in Linux. Knowing how to unzip a .tar.gz file allows users to extract and access the archives’ contents efficiently.
Gzip compression uses a checksum to make sure data integrity. When you extract files from a .tar.gz archive, the checksum is automatically verified to detect & handle any potential data corruption. Most file managers, such as Nautilus, Dolphin, or Thunar, support extracting tar.gz files by right-clicking on the file and choosing the Extract option from the context menu. You can also choose the destination directory where you want to extract the files. Like many archive and compression formats, .tar.gz is an effective way to save storage space and make it easier to send large amounts of data.
As a result, we recommend sticking to free (but trustworthy) tools or simply using the command line. Canonical released its first official version of the OS, Ubuntu 4.10, codenamed ‘Warty Warthog’ in October artificial intelligence machine learning deep learning and more 2004. Canonical released its first official version of the OS, Ubuntu 4.10, codenamed ‘Warty Warthog’ in October 2004. Most Linux distributions come with the tar command pre-installed by default.
That means they maintain their original characteristics. This compression is lossless – that means no data is lost during the compression process, and the original files can be fully restored upon extraction. This format is common in the Unix/Linux world and is widely used to create compressed archives. But it does not compress the data, which results in a larger file size compared to compressed formats. Starting from Windows 10 build 17063, tar and curl are supported, therefore it is possible to unzip a .tar.gz file in one step by using tar command, as below.