Updated: 11 October 2026 · Applies to: AlmaLinux 9, Rocky Linux 9, Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 12
Create and unpack archives with tar, zip and compression tools.
tar czf archive.tar.gz dir # create (gzip) tar cJf archive.tar.xz dir # create (xz, smaller) tar tzf archive.tar.gz # list contents tar xzf archive.tar.gz # extract tar xzf archive.tar.gz -C /dest # extract to a folder zip -r archive.zip dir # create a zip unzip archive.zip # extract a zip gzip file / gunzip file.gz # compress / decompress one file
