It is recommended that you download the zip distribution archive. Windows XP has a native built-in Zip tool that allows you to extract zip archives. Other versions can use the Jar tool bundled with the JDK to extract the contents of the archive. Tools like Winzip and ZipGenius can extract the zip archive as well as the tarball.

Most Linux and Unix distributions have the tar utility so it is recommended that you download the tarball. If you do not have tar you may have unzip in which case it is advisable to get the zip archive. If you do not have any of these utilities you can use the Jar tool bundled with the JDK to extract the contents of the zip archive.