gzip and gunzip

gzip (GNU Zip) is the command used to compress files and gunzip (GNU unzip) is command used to decompress files. Files compressed with gzip have a .gz suffix.

Example: 

To compress a file using gzip you would type:

gzip file_name

Specific Example:

To compress a file name budget.ods (.ods is the extension for an OpenDocument Spreadsheet) you would type:

gzip  budget.ods

tar

tar (tape archive) is the command used to archive/package and extract tar files.

To extract a tar file you would type:

tar -xzvf name_of_archive.tar.gz

Specific example:

To extract the file Joomla_1.0.11-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz in the current directory you would type:

tar -xzvf Joomla_1.0.11-Stable-Full_Package.tar.g

To archive a directory using tar you would type:

tar -czvf file_name.tar.gz directory_to_archive

Specific Example:

To create an archive of john_doe's home folder you would type

tar -czvf john_doe.tar.gz /home/john_doe

*Note: When tar used to create an archive the file ends up being a compressed tar file with the .gz suffix (gzip compression).