Is there a program to unzip and install a tar.gz ??? Is there any way to make a shell to do this. If not what would be a good prgramming language to do this, Java, Perl, C ++??

it takes a couple of programs: tar and gzip. (if it is a tar.bz2 then its tar and bzip2 ).

from a shell:
if you use kde it comes with a program called ark that will unzip it for you

if you use gnome it uses file-roller for extraction.

I should note that most (as in virtually all) tar.gz files are not programs but source directories. you have to compile them in order to run the program. If your looking for ready-to-go programs, you need rpm's (for fedora and other rpm based distro's) which are precompiled packages you install on your distro.

Head over to the fedora forum on this board to learn how to set up yum for fedora. It will make it easy to get and install programs precompiled and ready to go.

Thanks i will def head over to setup yum, but I have gnome, I see the file roller and then a folder pops up how would i install that program from there? Would i have to double click on a particular file to download, like in windows? Or is the terminal the only option for install?

Once the folder pops up, ( most tar.gz/tar.bz2 archives extract into a folder unlike .zip which just have loose files in them) click on the folder to highlight it, the click the extract button. After that, a file dialog appears asking you to pick a directory to extract the folder to. Finally, click the extract button at the bottom right corner to do the actual extraction.

i have the box with the letter in it. I right click it and hit extract. A folder then pops up in my home directory
I am trying the install kcheckgmail and k3b. They both have folders in my home directory, I dont see anymore extracting buttons on the folders i created the first time i hit extract

these are source directories. You have to cd into them and build them (from the shell). I'm sure there are good rpm's out there that you can install for these packages using yum or some other program. The reason I say this is because on some distro's (fedora, mandrake and suse especially) the system is split into different parts (the usable files from the development files). If you do not have all of the development files, you cannot compile the given application. But with yum or another package manager, you just type something along the lines of "yum install k3b" and it handles everything for you. Definitely head over to the fedora board and get yum runnin..

Thanks I will do that now!!

YUM is so freaking easy !!!!!!!! I love it thank you and I am the smartest man alive!!!!