When the compressed files are downloaded on unix or linux, their extension are somtimes different like gz, zip, tar,  tar.gz. The commands to extract / decompress / unarchive these files are different, so here is the guide:

How to compress /archive  files with “zip”

zip -r filename.zip file1 file2 file2

How to decompress / unarchive / extract .zip extension

unzip filename.zip

How to compress /archive  files with “gzip”

gzip filename.gz file1 file2 file3

How to decompress / unarchive / extract .gz extension

gunzip filename.gz

How to compress /archive  files with “tar”

tar -cvf foo.tar file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

Or compress / archive the whole directory with “tar”

tar -cvf filename.tar files/directories

How to decompress / unarchive / extract .tar extension

tar -xvf filename.tar

How to decompress / unarchive / extract .tgz or .tar.gz extension

tar -xzvf filename.tgz

or

tar -xzvf filename.tar.gz