Open a tar file using the command line on Linux

Opening a tar file on Linux couldn’t be easier. Navigate to the directory of your tar file and enter the following command:

tar -zxvf yourfile.tar.gz

This will extract the contents of yourfile.tar.gz in your current working directory. Depending on the permissions of this directory you might need to add sudo in front of the above command, followed by the password for your sudo-user:

sudo tar -zxvf yourfile.tar.gz

If you’d rather untar this file to a different directory, add the -C flag followed by the directory you wish to extract the contents of yourfile.tar.gz to:

tar -zxvf -C ~/MyFolder/ yourfile.tar.gz