When I download application source from kde-apps.org they're now have an extension "tar.g:" and they're a multiple step extraction process from within Dolphin

1) what the heck are they? I assume a compressed tar'ed folder
2) why are they being used? I assume better compression
3) is there a way to extract them in a single step? from within Dolphin?

example:
file dl'ed is: OrganizasyonizM-V0.8.21.tar.g:
extracts to: OrganizasyonizM-V0.8.21.tar.g:.uncompressed (a folder)
the folder holds: OrganizasyonizM-V0.8.21.tar.g:.uncompressed (a compressed file)
which extracts a folder: OrganizasyonizM-V0.8.21.tar.g: (a folder)
which has within a folder: OrganizasyonizM (a folder) which has the source

Do you mean .tar.gz files?


If so, it's a gzipped tar (tape archive) file.

The easiest way to uncompress it is:

tar xvzf file.tar.gz

meaning:
x - extract
v - Verbose. Shows what is doing
z - Uncompress. Needed because it's gzipped
f - The next parameter is the file name.

Ark (on KDE) also works fine, albeit it has problems with files with accented characters that come from other OS...

It seems my browser (Opera) wasn't able to handle/see these properly and was missing the gz extension type for the mime type x-gzip - it appears that it got corrupted

Resolved by adding a gz filetype to mime type x-gzip in download preferences

I think something between you and kde-apps.org replaced the last 'z' with ':' when you tried to download it. I tried the link just now and the extension on the download was 'tar.gz'.
Try renaming the file to ...tar.gz and use ark. If ark complains then try re-downloading the file.