I used to download and unzip files with a browser and file manager until I realized I could do it all from the terminal, without clicking or switching windows. I now use just six commands all the time ...

using tar to extract files off tape, but they get extracted into their archived directory structure. how do i extract them so that all files are extracted into the local drive without being put into ...

Sure, using the Linux command line is optional. But these are commands I depend on every day. See what you think.

I have a 2 Gig tar file, "myfile.tar", that normally takes about 2 minutes to completely untar all of it's contents. However, in a seperate scenario, if I try to extract just one file from "myfile.tar ...