orry for being so terse. All I know is what I read in the man
(manual) command, as in "man tar" at a command prompt. It tells a
whole lot about every Linux command, most of which you will never use
but the following you do need.

tar is a linux command, like unzip in DOS, except you have to get the
upper/lower case correct in Linux or it won't work. You type it at a
command prompt to use it; i.e:

root@Unique-K1010:~#, (where Unique-K1010 is the name of my system,
yours will be different).

It only works when you have root privileges, so type sudo bash and
enter your user password (sudo = do superuser; bash is the "Bourne
again shell" (Linux in joke). User Prompt is $; root is #. Don't ask
me why!

To unpack an archive you need to be in the same directory, or else
type in the fully qualified pathname. I prefer to be in the same
directory. It's simpler.

At the prompt:

root@Unique-K1010:~#

Type the command, modifiers and name of the archive:

tar -xvf Name_of_archive

x means extract
v means verbose (lots of progress messages as it works)
f means the file that follows is to be operated on

The "-" only needs to be in front of the first parameter if they are
stacked together.

That should give you some files and a readme or similar, which
(hopefully) tells how to install it. It might be in a directory it has
created. If it doesn't help you may find general instructions by
googling the programme name. A .deb file is much to be preferred.

More experienced users may have corrections to the above so don't jump
too soon to try it unless you have a spirit of adventure! Linux works
very well, and increasingly it "just works" but you are now getting
into the power and complexity of an awesome operating system.