.tar files are 'tape archive' files. A file format, where multiple files and directories are packaged together in a single archive. More often than not the tar file is compressed further using gzip or bzip2, yielding a .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 file.
Basically, you can think of .tar (and .tar.gz, tar.bz2 etc..) files as being more or less equivalent to a .zip file, or a .rar file.
To extract files from a tar file, you can use the command-line:
Code:
tar xvf ./yourtarfile.tar.gz
Or you could use Mint's file-manager to extract the files by right clicking on the file and selecting the option to extract files.
As for what's actually in the archive that you've downloaded, I couldn't say offhand.
{ Goes to take a look at the utorrent site }
OK, so it looks like utorrent is freeware and is not truly FREE software (because there is no source code download to allow you to build your own binaries).
Looking at the download sections on the utorrent site, it appears that the downloads there are built for very specific Linux distros. Mint is not mentioned anywhere there, so I would not take it for granted that any of the Linux versions available there will work properly, or even at all. The builds that are available there are all quite old too. Also all of the Linux utorrent software appears to be server software, rather than client software. If you plan to run a server, then fine I guess, you could give one of those builds a shot........ Personally, I wouldn't - but that's just me!
Looking at the content of the random tar.gz I just downloaded, it looks like it just has pre-built binaries in it. I personally do not want to risk running any of the binaries though - so I don't know what the pre-built binary files will do. It might be an installer that will download and install further software from bit-torrent, or it could just be the server itself.
To run the server (do so at your own risk!), you just need to ensure that it has execution permissions, which you can set from the file manager by right clicking on the binary file and opening up the properties, then look for the permissions section and ensure the executable tick-box is checked. You can also set it from the terminal. Basically open a terminal and use the cd command to move into the extracted directory, then use:
where filename is the name of the main binary file. Sorry, I deleted the .tar.gz and the extracted directories and files immediately after extracting them and having a quick peek at what was in the archive. So I didn't take note of any of the extracted files!
Once you have set the execution permission (if it didn't already have it), you can simply run the program. Again, either by double clicking on it in the file-manager, or from the command line:
or
That should then start the server. If you open it from the command-line, you should be able to see any error messages thrown by the server if it does crash.
I've never ran the utorrent software, so I have no idea how it should behave!
And once again, all of the Linux downloads available on utorrent.com are server software and are NOT client software. Clients only seem to be available for Windows and Mac.
But, if you are after a bit-torrent client, there should be several available to you in the Mint repositories. Deluge, Transmission and KTorrent are three that immediately spring to mind! To see what's available, either browse for torrent client software using Mints software manager (or whatever it is called), or use 'apt-cache search' on the command line e.g.
Code:
apt-cache search torrent | grep -i client
This will yield a list of all packages with torrent in the package name, or description that also contain the word "client".
Once you have found a client that you want to install, you can simply point and click in the software manager application, or to install via the command-line you can use:
Code:
sudo apt-get install packagename
Where packagename is the name of the package you want to install.
I hope this has been of some use to you!
