TAR is a Tape ARchive - a collection of one or more files into a single file. Sometimes called a tar-ball.
BZ (short for BZip2) is a compressor.
Thus, a file ending in .tar.bz2 is a compressed archive of files. It is similar to a ZIP in that respect.
VASSAL is not particularly well suited on mobile devices because touch gestures are not particularly well supported (right click f.ex.).
Which kind of tablet did you install on? OS?
For tablets, where the command line is probably hidden away, you probably need some app that can handle the tar-ball.
You can install Debian GNU/Linux - or any other Linux distro - on a tablet, but for VASSAL you should probably have an external mouse. Which Linux distro is best suited depends on the tablet. Perhaps search on XDA.
VASSAL for linux is distributed as a Java ARchive JAR and as long as you have Java Runtime Environment JRE installed on the tablet, then you should be able to run it (with the aforementioned caveats). So you need
- A Linux distro that can run on your tablet
- And that distro should have JRE
Even though Android is written in Java it is not a real JRE, and the Android Java engine cannot execute VASSAL directly. Also, the kernel of Android is indeed Linux, but it is not exactly like other OSs that uses Linux. All apps are sandboxed and run in the Android Virtual Machine.
If you don’t want to root your tablet, you should see if it is possible to install a Linux distribution as an application on your tablet. Then, you can install VASSAL (and a JRE) into that Linux installation.
If it will work for you, I’m sure a lot of people like to know how you did it. Playing VASSAL games on a tablet would indeed be very nice.
Yours,
Christian