Hi. I have been wondering when I'd need to do this and the time has come to download some files and unzip them. I'm looking to install an Openoffice GUI to hook up to my MySQL databases. The instructions I've found are:
1. copy the unixODBC*.tar.gz file somewhere you can create files and directories
2. gunzip unixODBC*.tar.gz
3. tar xvf unixODBC*.tar
Doing so will create a unixODBC directory with all source files inside.

I am not familiar with any of these commands. When I clicked on the download button on the site, it seemed to unzip the files into my /tmp directory automatically. Anyway, what is the standard procedure for downloading .tar files and unzipping them? I'm on Mandrake 9.2.

u download them like any other file , i use a program called "downloader for x" its like getright , i just copy the link then past it in the program .
for unzipping .tar and .tar.gz u could use a program called ark its just like winzip , or u could use the commands that u said.

the thing is .tar archives many files into just one and .gz compresses this .tar file so thats why the file is unixODBC*.tar.gz

well to compress "your" step 2 and 3 into one step, just type :
tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz
to uncompress the tarball ... it will uncompress the contents to a folder
in the same directory ..
and the best way to go after extracting, is to go into the newly
uncompressed folder and read either (or both) the README
and/or INSTALL file ...

tar.gz
.........................................................


tar.bz2
As DrOzz mentioned read the "README" and/or the "INSTALL" file.

and take a look here.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ryid=35&long=1

not a big issue, but i thought it would be worth mentioning that the first two steps can be compressed into one, but just typing :
tar -jxvf filename.tar.bz2