Source code packages normally have file names ending with tar.gz or, recently, also with tar.bz2.
RedHat packages (or RPM packages) have a format used by many distributions (such as RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake). RPM is also the standard package format of the Linux Standard Base.
The concept of the ports collection originates from the FreeBSD project.[2] The general meaning of ‘port’ is a software package that has been modified to run on a particular hardware or software platform. With respect to the FreeBSD operating system and to ports collections in general, this means that a software package is available in the ports collection as source code.
When installing a package using the ports collection, the package is first obtained through its author's Web or FTP site. After downloading, the package, which is a common tar.gz source code package, is extracted, and all necessary patches are applied to it.