tgz archive files, also called “tarballs. gz file in Linux operating systems using the command line option? Introduction: A tarball (or tar. gz) file on a Linux using command line option? Most Linux and open source software files are distributed in either. The tar command used to rip a collection of files and directories into highly compressed archive file commonly called tarball or tar, gzip and bzip. tgz from nas box and uploaded using scp to my CentOS 7 Linux server.