[ubuntu] git clone help please

1) git clone httpxx//... downloads the entire git repository, including all change history, to your computer; saving it to a local git repository in an automatically-determined directory name.

2) You can't git clone a .zip file's contents as far as I know, certainly not if it's not a git repository. Two things you can do though: A) just unzip it and use the result, B) use your local git repository (the result of the git clone) and git checkout the last "good" revision (see man git-checkout for more information on how that works).