decompress:

gunzip file.gz
- OR -
gzip -d file.gz

keep the original : -k

.gunzip -k file.gz

If it's a .tar.gz (or .tgz) archive

Extract everything with:

tar -xzf archive.tar.gz

Options:

• x = extract
• z = use gzip
• f = filename

To see the contents first:

tar -tzf archive.tar.gz

View the contents without extracting

zcat file.gz

or

gunzip -c file.gz

Check what type of file it is

If you're not sure whether it's a compressed file or a tar archive:

file filename.gz

For example:

$ file backup.gz
backup.gz: gzip compressed data, was "backup.tar"

or

$ file wordlist.txt.gz
wordlist.txt.gz: gzip compressed data, was "wordlist.txt"