Linux tar for unzipping

1	tar xvzf file.tar.gz

x: This option tells tar to extract the files.

v: The “v” stands for “verbose.” This option will list all of the files one by one in the archive.

z: The z option is very important and tells the tar command to uncompress the file (gzip).

f: This options tells tar that you are going to give it a file name to work with.

Note:
For compressing files, you can use

1	tar cvfz file.tar.gz dir/

The z tell that the files are compressed using gzip, and we usually name the zipped file .tar.gz.

Reference