How to Unzip Extract a GZ File in Linux

You can do this from any Finder window on your Mac, and your extracted files will be available in a new folder in the same directory as the original GZ archive. The -l (list) option provides some information about an archive file. It shows you the compressed and uncompressed sizes of the file in the archive, the compression ratio, and the name of the what is petty cash and its purpose file.

Step 3: Select “Extract Here” or “7-Zip > Extract files”

1. At the time of writing, the DEFLATE algorithm is nearly three decades old.
2. You can do this from any Finder window on your Mac, and your extracted files will be available in a new folder in the same directory as the original GZ archive.
3. The name of the gz file you want to extract should be replaced by the name of filename.
4. Open the Command Prompt with administrative rights, and you should be fine.
5. Since after all, it’s only after decompression that the files are of any use or not.
6. Yes, you will need a file archiver like 7-Zip or WinRAR to open and extract the contents of a GZ file on Windows 11.

Once installed, these programs integrate with the context menu in Windows, making it easy to access their features. All you need is a file archiver like 7-Zip or WinRAR, and you can easily extract the contents of the GZ file. Simply download and install the archiver, right-click on the GZ file, select the appropriate option to extract the file, and voila! A GZ file is an archive compressed using the gzip compression technology.

Ubuntu Documentation

If your target folder looks empty even after successfully running the command, that’s probably because you ran the it without admin privileges. Open the Command Prompt with administrative rights, and you should be fine. The file is overwritten and you’re silently returned to the command line. As long as you download them from their official websites or trusted sources, they are safe to use.

Text files or archives are frequently compressed with BZIP2 files. Use the bzip2 utility to create and extract BZIP2 files in Linux. The bzip2 utility offers a high compression ratio and is particularly powerful on text files.

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The gzip data compression tool was written in the early 1990s, and it’s still found in every Linux distribution. There are other compression tools available, but no matter which Linux computer you find yourself needing to work on, you’ll find gzip on it. So if you know how to use gzip, you’re good to go without the need to install anything. If you’re coming across one for the first time, use one of the methods above to extract the contents from your GZ archive. The above methods work on all the popular platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. Like ZIP, you can simply double-click on your GZ archive, and it should start extracting its content.

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Without using any external software, you can easily extract gz files in Linux using these commands. To ensure that you extract the correct file, it’s crucial to keep in mind to navigate to the appropriate directory before running any of these commands. There are various ways to open and create compressed files on Windows, and that applies to .GZ files as well. If you prefer commands, you can use the Command Prompt method.

With the techniques outlined in this guide, extracting .GZ files should no longer be a daunting task. The result is gzip has created an archive file for each text file in the directory structure. This time, we can see that gzip has deleted the archive file after extracting the original file. To retain the archive file, we need to use the -k (keep) option again, as well as the -d (decompress) option. After installing the archiver, you will notice new options in the context menu when you right-click files. These new options are related to the file archiver you’ve installed and are the key to opening your GZ file.

Alternatively, you can use 7zip’s context menu tools on Windows to unzip a .GZ files. Be sure to select this option during installation, and then you’ll be a right-click away from opening GZ files with 7zip. The -r (recursive) option causes gzip to compress the files in an entire directory tree. The original file, a spreadsheet called “calc-sheet.ods” is 11 KB,  and the compressed file—also known as an archive file—is 9.3 KB. Note that the name of the archive file is the name of the original file with “.gz” appended to it. Both options will extract the contents of the GZ file, but with “Extract Here,” the contents will be placed in the same location as the GZ file.

You can only wring so much compression out of any given file and in this case, that limit was reached with level 6 compression. With bigger files, the difference between level 6 and level 9 would be more pronounced. You can choose to prioritize the speed of creation of the archive or the degree of compression. You do this by providing a number as an option, from -1 through top -9. The -1 option gives the fastest speed at the sacrifice of compression and -9 gives the highest compression at the sacrifice of speed.

Your files will be placed in a new folder in the same directory as the original GZ file. You can open GZ files without using any third-party tools on your Mac. Again, you can either use the Terminal to extract files from a GZ archive or the built-in macOS tool to decompress your files. There’s a command called tar that you can use within the Windows Terminal or Command Prompt to extract your GZ archive contents. This command is built into your operating system, so you don’t need to install anything to use it. However, gzip does have one drawback it can’t really compress multiple files at once, so we need to use gzip along with tar if we want to compress multiple files.

In case you’re a graphical user interface person, you can use a free third-party app to access your GZ archives. As we have seen over the course of this article, xz files are nothing special. Most of the newer graphical distros like Ubuntu and Linux Mint come with built in tools to decompress files using a GUI. If you have been on Linux for sometime you might have come across another file extension .tar.gz. This overcomes the big limitation of standard gz, and allows for compression of entire folders. Before we dive into the steps, let’s quickly understand what we’re up against.

If you know in advance that you’re happy to have the file in the directory overwritten by the file from the archive, use the -f (force) option. If you need the original file you can retrieve it from the archive file. But if you prefer to retain the original file, you can use the -k (keep) option. At the time of writing, the DEFLATE algorithm is nearly three decades old.

How to Open a GZ File on Linux Using the Built-In Tool

GZ files are compressed files, similar to ZIP files, created using the Gzip compression utility. They’re often used in Unix and Linux systems but can be opened in Windows 11 with the right tools. Are you having trouble unzipping a GZ file on your Linux system? Knowing how to unzip Gz files in Linux is a crucial skill for any Linux user.