Hadoop Basic Terms Random

Tar bal ( Tape Archive ball)
Source File
Package ( they are precompiled for specific kernel and architechture )

Examples respectively
.src.rpm :- source code that will compile on your machine and this produces a .rpm file.
.tar.gz :- just plain zipped source code
 rpm :- pre compiled source 

Tar bal ( Tape Archive ball) 

A tarball is a good way of installing new software however the down side of tarballs is there is no good way of removing software. Typically when you build install a tarbal you run

Code:

./configure
make
make install

If you want to remove this software you can, if you are lucky, run make remove or make uninstall. But for this to work the makefile has to include instructions of what to remove, and that is sometimes not the case. 

Source

Package
.src.rpm files are sort of between .tar.gz (called tarball)and .rpm files.

the .src.rpm files are like a tarball but with som aditional information that makes it possible for 'rpm' to compile and build a .rpm package. This package is compiled for your machine and saved in some RPM directory.
For me it is

Code:

/usr/src/RPM/RPMS/i586/

because I use the i586 arch.

This is nice because you can now install the .rpm file and get the program in your rpm database4. Using RPM

In its simplest form, RPM can be used to install packages: 

rpm -i foobar-1.0-1.i386.rpm

The next simplest command is to uninstall a package: 

rpm -e foobar

If that don't help try this:
While these are simple commands, rpm can be used in a multitude of ways. To see which options are available in your version of RPM, type:
rpm --help
You can find more details on what those options do in the RPM man page, found by typing:
man rpm


RPM Vs Tarball Or Source
RPMs are generally easier to manage, and as mentioned above, they are easier to remove, and also to keep track of updates (especially if you use something like yum to update), because rpm maintains a database of what's installed.

However, there are two downsides to rpms that come to mind. First, not every piece of software is in an rpm, or at least in an rpm for your distro. The other is that you are reliant on the packagers to produce updates in a timely fashion. You may, for example, want to update something like clamav as soon as it is released, rather than wait a week or two for a new package.

Some rpm's also have quirks. There is, supposedly and issue of compatability between some repos, for example livna.org and the freshrpms repos are meant to have issues working together (something about renaming system files). I've also found occasionally that dependencies can be problematic for some packages.

BUILD RPM FROM SOURCE

Use the rpmbuild command to build an RPM from the source rpm. E.G.: "rpmbuild -ba package.spec"
There are several options, such as "-bp" to just apply the patches, and "-bi" to build a package and install it. 

See the "rpmbuild" man-page for details.

A source RPM will install a tarball in the /SOURCES/ directory. It will also install patches in the same directory. Also, a package.specfile is installed in /SPECS/ directory.

The source RPM will contain an earlier version of the source, and patches to make it current.

FINAL which type of installation is better.either installed by rpm or tar 
package.?

If you use a rpm based distro, then use the rpm package. If you use the tarball you may have to configure it and compile it too. 

courtesy :
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/difference-between-src-rpm-and-tar-gz-packages-103683/