I'm a bit lost. But lemme see if I understand. To uncompress a file named rdist-v1.tar.gz, you could:
1- tar xvzf rdist-v1.tar.gz
as you did or...
2 - gunzip rdist-v1.tar.gz
That would make a bigger file named rdist-v1.tar. Note that now it's tar, not gunzip, so type
tar xvf rdist-v1.tar
For bunzip2 (files ended with bz2) the command is:
bunzip2 rdist-v1.tar.bz2
I really did not understand the question, but this is how I uncompress stuff
Good luck and Happy New Year!