What is a GZ file? Learn about GZ (GZip) and TGZ files here

A GZ file is an compressed file, which means that it is a file that has been reduced in size. This is often done to speed up distribution over the Internet and to save storage space.

GZ file details

GZ is a type of compression format which is very popular on Unix and Linux based computers. Windows based computers rarely use this format.

GZ stands for GNU ZIP. It is quite an old format, first released to the public in 1992 by Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler. They based their compression algorithm (Deflate) on LZ77 and Huffman coding, as they wanted to avoid using the LZW algorithm and other algorithms with patent problems.

Unlike ZIP, GZip does not support archiving. This means that it is not possible to put more than one file in a GZ file. This is circumvented by first using TAR to archive (not compress) multiple files into one, and then compressing it with GZip afterwards. This results in a file with the extension .tar.gz or .tgz.

Opening and creating GZ and TGZ files

If you are trying to open or create GZ files on a Windows PC, then you will need a tool like BitZipper. After installing BitZipper, you can open a GZ file simply by double-clicking it or by right-clicking on it in Windows Explorer, or by starting BitZipper and opening the GZ file the same way you open a document in your word processor.

Technical details

If you are looking for technical details and the complete history of the .GZ file format, please refer to this Wikipedia article.