The "." isn't working because you are already in the MyDocs directory. Basically the "." means "extract in my current directory please". Here are the commands you need to do (assuming you have created the MyDocs/FAS/ directory) cd /home/user/MyDocs/FAS/ tar -xzvf /home/user/MyDocs/faircrack.tar.gz . As for iw, I think you need to download "wireless-tools" or something like that. But whats wrong with installing aircrack-ng from the repos?