[RVickner1]

I'm new to Linux.. I use MS Windows XP on my system but I got a small hard drive that I setup Mandrake Linux 8.1 on.. Everything goes ok, except for when I try to open a file.. like the file ends with tar.gz.. It says I dont have a viewer to open these files, what do i need..
thanks

[codejockey]

Any file that ends in .gz is (likely) a gzipped file (roughly the equivalent of a zip file) and you will need gunzip in order to unpack the archive. The gunzip command is probably already on your system. For a file that ends in tar.gz or .tgz, you can use the command:

tar -tvzf filename

to display the contents of filename, and the command:

tar -xvzf filename to extract the contents of filename.

On Linux, there are a number of archive formats (tar, cpio, as well as others) and several compression schemes, so quite a few combinations are possible. In practice, however, tar and gzip are used together most often to produce (compressed) archives with a .tgz or tar.gz extension.

Hope this helps.

[RVickner1]

I don't get what you mean.. I'm running 8.1 and using Gnome.. And Nautilus as a file manager thing, when i go in and try to click on something i download, it says "Nautilsus has no installed viewer capable of displaying" then the filename and.tar.gz..
thanks hope i'm making sense..

[codejockey]

Gack! -- I didn't understand the context where you were having problems, so apologies for not being clearer in my reply. Here's my next attempt:

You will likely want to download tar or tgz or gzipped (.gz) files, and uncompress and/or extract them on your own system. Although you might be able to "view" them without downloading, you probably won't be able to learn much, since the "view" will be mostly a listing of filenames, which (IMHO) doesn't tell you a whole lot.

Once you download the file(s), you can run either the gzip or the tar command from the command line. You can also use the help facility in gnome to read the Nautilus documents (where, IIRC, you can associate programs with filetypes).

Hope this helps.

[Phaedrus]

RVickner1
As you`re new and running Mandrake 8.1 (like me) I would recommend starting under KDE. You can then simply Right click your gzip files and select "Extract here".

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Trev.

[RVickner1]

I tried what you said with the right click, but there wasn't and command that said "extract here" I've been trying to download Linzip hoping that will help me, but the link is dead and there homepage isnt working..

[blablabla]

I´m also a newbie, but maybe this will helps you:

You are using Gnome right? Ok, at the botton of the screen(left), you see the Gnome symbol right? Next to that You hace an icon: this icon is a black screen, right? Click in there and you´ll get a prompt(something like hte MS-DOS screen).

[Ok, sorry if you knew it already, i don´t hnow how newbie you are.]

Ok, now lets say you want to open the file whose name is MyFile.tar.gz (or MyFila.tgz, works the same). And let´s say that the hole path for this file is /home/ME/MyFila.tar.gz
Ok, on the black console(the one that appeared when you clicked the icon) type the following:
cd /home/ME

This will make you go to the directory where your file is. then type the following:
tar -xzf MyFile.tar.gz

Now, if nothing seems to happen, I mean, if no message is displayed, then you can type the following:
ls -l
That will list all the files on the directory /home/ME, included a new file named MyFile, without the ".tar.gz". And you you can close the console and open the file in the way you usually open a file.
BUT....BUT if you get a message, that´s probably an error message. That would mean that maybe you can not open files with the "tar.gz" extension (it´s like when working under windows you try to unzip a file without having WinZip or similar....)

If you get the error write back, to see what you get, and to see how to fix it ok?
Hope I didn´t missundertood your problem.