What Are Tarball Files?

tarballs are file collections created by the tar utility program in linux systems. although they lack some of the features of RPM and Debian packages, they're more universally compatible and they are easier to create then RPM and Debian packages

if you are familiar with winzip, you can compress many files into one file.

with tar, you can create one single file from many files and directories, however, with tar, there is no compression, you can use gzip to compress tar files