How can I uncompress a *.7z file?

First install the p7zip-full package:

sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

With this, Nautilus should have an option to uncompress 7-Zip Files.

I also recommend p7zip-rar so it also includes support for RAR files.

This is assuming you want to do it via GUI with Nautilus. If not, after downloading the packages above do the following:

7z x PACKAGE.7z 

that should eXtract the packages with full path.

There is also dtrx - which is immensely useful for un-archiving anything.

it stands for "Do The Right eXtraction" - and will uncompress anything without any fuss.

simply:

sudo apt-get install dtrx
dtrx archive.tar.XX

Manpage: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man1/dtrx.1.html

UPDATE for Ubuntu 20.04 :

According to their pypi page, dtrx is not currently available in the official repos. Thus, if you cannot install this via apt, then you can still use pip3:

pip3 install dtrx

If you don't already have pip3 installed, you can install it with

sudo apt install python3-pip

Run following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install p7zip-full p7zip-rar

Or search through the ubuntu software center as 7zip and unrar and install the packages.

For ubuntu 17.04, no need for the full package, p7zip is enough:

sudo apt install p7zip

Then, uncompress using the -d command:

p7zip -d something.7z

First install the according package sudo apt install p7zip-full

• use x flag to extract files with full path
• use -o flag to set output directory

7z x <archive_name> -o{Directory}

for example

7z x file.7z -o/home/michael/Documents/NewFolder

Notice that there is no space between -o and the output directory. If the file was encrypted, it will automatically ask for the password.

The other answers did not work for me.

But this command worked fine:

7z e file.7z