Is there a difference between the two?

.tgz is the standard package type for slackware I believe. the same as a standard tar.gz but suited to a slack file system, default installation paths etc... same as rpm's and mdk.rpm's for redhat and mandrake respectively

unfortunately "slackerz" think they 0wn the extension "tgz" but there's literally *no* difference whatsoever between a tarball named with the extension "tgz" or "tar.gz", note an extension doesnt say nuttin (in this case) bout the contents.

A .tgz slack package usually contains a precompiled binary, so it's best to make sure what your downloading is not a slack package...unless your a slacker.

Not all Slackers think that. It just depends on who compressed it and how they wanted to. Of course it's not distro specific to Slack...They just use it as thier preferred method and some get conflustered....

Maybe this is too obvious but let me put it up there just in case.

xxx.tar.gz implies that xxx has first been tar-ed and then been run through gzip to compress.

Of course you can add whatever file extensions you want, but assuming they are telling the truth.

xxx.tgz is often created automatically using tar with the --gzip or short form -z flag.

The man page for tar:
-z, --gzip, --ungzip filter the archive through gzip

So it seems to me that a xxx.tgz has been automatically run through gzip, after tarring.

Thus, I don't think there is a difference in the two.

Okay, I may be gongoroo here, but if I remember right... tar and gzip don't care what the extension is at all, and the tgz extension really only came about so as to keep DOS from going berserk if it saw a file extension with two "."'s in it.

Of course, I can't remember how I came to know this, so I may be channelling a passed away MCSE who just wants to confuse things.

-Cheers,

Finegan

i think that's right... the .tar.gz thing got compressed to .tgz because of DOS filename restrictions. if a tarred and gziped file needed to pass through a DOS machine, it needed to be .tgz

OK, but is there any difference in the file itself or is it only a difference in the extension chosen.

That depends on the file. It could be just because of the way it was packaged or it could be a slack package. Most of the .tgz packages you see these days are for slackware.