I have downloaded a file that has a .tar.gz extension on my windows laptop and I have used 7zip to extract files out of it. My question is how can I burn these files to a disk and then have another pc boot off these files. The only reason I am asking this question is the site that I need the ISO image from is doing maintence and the only file I can download is the .tar.gz file on my windows desktop. Is it possible to use this .tar.gz file to install? After extracting the file it is name Prebook3.0.tar on my windows desktop.

Thanks

tar.gz, okay- the .gz shows the user it is gzipped, tar is (more or less) a container nowadays.

For windows programmes to unpackage tarballs, you're better off asking a windows forum, they'll be far quicker that asking here

AFAIK you can use 7Zip or unrar

Okay, you unzipped the tar.gz file and now you have a .tar file, right? The .tar.gz is similar to a zip file, it contains a lot of files in one archive and then compresses it. In a zip file, this is done in one step. With a tar.gz file, this has two steps. First someone took many files and put them in one archive, which ends in .tar, then the tar file is compressed using gzip, and it becomes .tar.gz

Now, what you have done with 7zip is just undo the second part, the compression. You still need to get the files out of the .tar which is still an archive (just not compressed). All you need to do is untar it. I am sure 7zip can let you do that, too. So you probably just need to open it with 7zip again and ask it to unpack the tar file.

Next time, if you open a tar.gz file with any archiver program, and you all you see is a tar file inside, just double-click that tar file and it will give you the real contents of the archive.

Hello again,

Well I installed slackware 12.2 on a pc and downloaded the prebook.tar.gz using lynx to my slackware machine. But now the problem is that I use tar -xvzf prebook3.0.tar.gz and nothing happens but things scroll accross the screen like directory name but nothing is actually untarred. what i am i doing wrong tried gzip -d prebook.tar.gz and now my file is prebook.tar. I know after i untar the file I should be able to cd into that directory and do a ./configure. help
thanks vadder

"tar xvzf" is indeed the correct command to uncompress a tar.gz file. Are you sure it did not unpack the files? maybe the directory is not named as you expect it to be? Did you check with 'ls' to see what the current directory holds?

Also, are you reading the Slackbook? You really should read it to learn how to use Slackware, and maybe some other general linux guides.

http://www.slackbook.org/html/index.html

Good luck!

you should do
a directory will be created, normally it should be prebook3.0
read the readme and install files