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Alternatives to tar (in Ubuntu repos)

atool

Description

Tool for managing file archives of various types atool is a script for managing file archives of various types (tar, tar+gzip, zip etc). The main command is probably aunpack, extracting files from an archive. It overcomes the dreaded "multiple files in archive root" problem by first extracting to a unique subdirectory, and then moving back the files if possible. aunpack also prevents local files from being overwritten by mistake.

Other commands provided are apack (create archives), als (list files in archives), and acat (extract files to standard out).

dtrx

Description

Intelligently extract multiple archive types dtrx is basically the same as tar -zxf or tar -xjf except you don't have to remember the flags for each file. But there's more to it than that. You know those really annoying files that don't put everything in a dedicated directory, and have the permissions all wrong? dtrx takes care of all those problems for you, too. dtrx is simple and powerful. Just use the same command for all your archive files, and they'll never frustrate you again.

unp

Description

Unpack (almost) everything with one command unp is a small perl script which makes extraction of any archive files a bit easier. It support several compressors and archiver programs, chooses the right one(s) automatically and extracts one or more files in one go.

You may also want to install some non-free packages like "unace-nonfree", "unrar-nonfree" and "lha" to extract archives of these types.