Ubuntu – Can’t extract a large zip file

For a GUI I'd say the easiest way is a nautilus script. The main line of which would be:

unzip "$item" && trash "$item"

It works in bash/dash just as easy. In nautilus the whole thing would look like this:

#!/bin/bash
# Nautilus script to unzip and then remove a zip archive.
# Nautilus script usually go in "$HOME/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts"

IFS='
'
for item in $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS; do
    if [ -n "$(file -b "$item" | grep -o 'Zip')" ]; then
        unzip "$item" && trash "$item"
        # use trash instead of rm to move them to trash
        # (trash-cli package installed)
    fi
done

We'll extract to a different folder to be sure that permissions aren't in our way:

1. Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T should work).

2. Now create a temporary folder to extract the file:

   mkdir temp_for_zip_extract
   

3. Let's now extract the zip file into that folder:

   unzip /path/to/file.zip -d temp_for_zip_extract
   

You should now have the contents of your zip file temp_for_zip_extract and can copy them into the desired folder.

If you can't copy the files to your folder, then check the permissions on your target folder.

The path to the downloads folder depends on what you used to download it to, try ~/Downloads. If you can't find it, then try this in a terminal:

cd ~;  find -name 'filename.zip'

You can also use a file manager, of course. There is Nautilus, Nemo, Thunar and many more, depending on your environment. Start the file manager and double click on your zip file, just like you would do in Windows.