I paid for RAR back in 2004 and the same registration key still works today. Compared to the various subscription-based software these days, RAR is a way better deal.
The WinRAR license is the nicest one I have. Find that old email and open the attached RAR file and voila, it's registered. I never regretted buying it.
It is probably a mixture of the following: is it anticompetitive, ongoing support, security. I think it is mainly anticompetitive issue.
Windows has been called many times for bundling software since it hurts other software companies. Which leads to government regulation.
It is sad since I think probably the windows solution could be better in some cases with the native support.
Low impact. It's not the sort of thing that drives PM promotions, right? If you look at the Gates era it was all about huge ideas like replacing the fs with a database, unified RPC architectures etc. Small things like a better terminal emulator, improved zip support didn't get a look-in because you can't easily communicate them. They just sort of ambiently sit around until someone notices them and is marginally more satisfied than they were previously.
These days the big ideas have gone away, so the small polish finally gets attention.
Keeps all kinds of features that are table stakes in Mac OS and Linux out of Windows b/c it's "anticompetitive" to bundle everything a user would want with an OS.
This is extraction only. RAR continues to be a proprietary format and compression will still need WinRAR. UNRAR.DLL (the RAR extraction implementation) has deliberately been free to use. Well at least as in beer.
Finally. Some here are probably devoted to 7zip or winrar; I can understand that but to be honest, I'd rather it just be painless and native. Not a big deal but one less program to install on new Windows computers now.
Is the M$ store even supposed to be used of serious software? I can't help but feel it is not intended to be taken seriously when I get flooded with ads for games and kids movies upon opening it.
don't get me started on the calculator that doesn't understand 1.23 and 1,23 are the same and instead of just using it, silently ignores the input when pasting it in from somewhere else -- and no, you can't change this setting without changing your computer's region settings.
I was assuming it would be the same UI that they currently use for .zip, i.e. basically just the file explorer but with an extra tab for the extra functions
I guess Microsoft just ran out of ideas how to improve the OS itself, so they started just blatantly knocking off every popular tool in their ecosystem.
Sends a particular message to anyone considering making any tools that work with their products.
I thought microsoft has been super generous in that regard. winrar has been out for 25+ years, effectively giving winrar a long runway to collect. It's about time this is incorporated into windows os.
I don't think it will kill WinRAR
WinRAR has a lot of features
but overall that's a very good new feature for windows who cares about other ppls money i care about myself
Article says they'll use libarchive to implement this. Libarchive says its .rar support is read only.
=) plenty of reason to keep win-rar around then.
I also hope wonder how they'll present .tar.gz files in the windows shell. Will you need to open the .gz, then the .tar? Or just one step. The world wonders...
Perhaps they need to send archives to an automated process that only accepts rar files and no one wants to touch it to support other formats because the guy who built left the company decades ago and the system has quietly just worked without trouble over all those years.
WinRAR has one feature I wish 7-Zip would add. When selecting multiple zips, you can extract each to their own subfolder with a single command. I miss that more than anything.
A few years ago I was working on optimizing scientific data delivery by switching our compression algorithms to use bzip2 instead of deflate64 for our zip files. I checked the zip standard and saw that bzip2 compression was added in 2001 so clients have had 20 years to implement it.
After changing our data delivery pipeline to bzip2 I patted myself on the back for finding an easy win which significantly reduced data size and increased compression speed. Fast forward a month or two later I get word that one of our clients is having problems uncompressing the data we sent them. It turns out that there were still windows 10 versions out in the wild that don’t support bzip2 zip files. I begrudgingly cursed windows and reverted my change, robbed of my small victory.
It truly is amazing how terrible compression support has been in windows. I could compress a +100GB data archive in under a minute using pigz, but since we had to support windows it would take over 30 minutes to compress the file using deflate. I calculated that with the space savings of gzip we could ship a gzip binary embedded with the data in a smaller size than the deflate data on its own. Unfortunately it was a no-go to ship decompression binaries with embedded data, but I thought it would be a cool idea to use cosmopolitan libc to create a platform agnostic binary which when run uses gzip/bzip/lz4 to quickly decompress the data in a platform agnostic way. I imagine such binaries would be picked up by anti-virus but it would be cool to be able to compress data with the latest algorithms without needing the client to have the matching decompression libraries.
I don't mean to be flippant. But I recently had to convert Phillips proprietary DS2 audio format file to MP3, and purchased Phillips software to do that. And then financials came down hard because it wasn't on the approved software list.
I know what you mean, but still, I find weird that any company worth 2 cents doesn't have an official compression app. In my experience lots of them use 7zip (free/open source), WinRAR (paid) or even WinZIP (also paid).
The idea of talking someone through using 7zip gives me nightmares. The fact it's multiple programs, has it's own file managers etc. Nah not worth trying to explain how to use it to a non-tech person.
I know it's a favorite program of a lot of people but personally I just think that's testament to how bad the situation is on windows.
I've not seen this in practice. Sure, it has a clunky gui, but outside of that 7-zip has excellent windows 10 or less integration and works fine in windows 11 even though the jerkwad potentates at M$ decided to hide the usual explorer options behind a second panel.
Sounds like you didn't have to explain to someone after 2020 where X button to close the window is located. I work with about 100 women on my job, only a few of them younger than 40.
Do you typically say ageist and sexist things online?
If you work IT support in any capacity, you should accept that your job is to solve problems for people who are doing things you either can't do or don't want to do.
Their experience is outside of your wheelhouse, and you are there to make the technology transparent to their job function. If you can't do your job with a glad heart then find a different one.
It is easy to ask, it is nearly impossible for every partner to actually install it. Many were working in locked down environments where they would need to get some very unhelpful central IT team to approve new software and install it on workstations. Even if they could convince the central IT team to install 7zip they probably weren’t using configuration management to install it so there was a chance someone would forget to install 7zip while provisioning new workstations. Unfortunately, when you do not know who is going to consume the data you need to use the most common denominator which is still zip with deflate64.
7z does have two advantages. The main one is that lack of support is obvious, so nobody wastes time thinking the file is broken. The other one is that you don't use bzip2, which compresses worse than lzma and decompresses slower.
People complain about their hardware not being supported by windows 11, but you know what? It's just a promise Microsoft won't force me into upgrading. So I'm glad mine isn't supported.
Microsoft's support for regular Zip files is a mixed blessing. On the one hand you can seamlessly open a Zip file and navigate through the directory structure. On the other hand, if you're not careful, you may think you're in an actual directory, and when you try to double-click to open or edit one of the files, you end up in a confusing world of temp files.
tl;dr I wish Microsoft would make it more obvious when you're navigating a compressed file (and thus not a native directory).
I wish it would default to unzipping the archive to a folder with the same name in the same directory (without the pop-up window asking me where to unzip it to) when I double-click it like on macOS or most Linux file managers, but to also have a context menu option to view the contents without allowing me to actually interact with the files within.
Large companies like Microsoft want to add their own bits of code to FOSS projects so they work better in that company's context. if nothing else, the project will receive code contributions.
It's just the side effects of capitalism.
Companies don't give a damn about how they are affecting climate and habitats, do we really want to expect them to support FOSS
Open source libraries need to include a clause preventing anyone turning more than X amount in revenue per year or training machine learning from using the code unless they pay a fee.
I think its perfectly OK for big companies to use FOSS tools without contributing anything. Why do you care? Authors gave it to the world for free or they would use more restrictive licence.
If the big company really wants some more stuff in it, they will probably contribute or donate anyway.
To me, it seems this is irrelevant methaphysical question that those that don't understand FOSS constantly try to empose. Once you accept money, its a different game, with money comes expectations... If you can't do something for free, and you expect to be payed for everything, you are probably not the one that will advance the field.
I admire people that passionatelly do stuff for nothing but pure passion and sence of accomplishment. That is the world I want to live in.
Yeah, there are predators, but if you really care about it you can probably create defensive strategy to minimize those chances.
Now every open source project needs an accounting system, a bookkeeper and register to pay taxes in multiple jurisdictions, for what may be a pittance in fees earned.
If the project is not going full-tilt as a startup, then that juice might not be worth the squeeze. Do maintainers want to add administrative duties to their plate just to maybe preemptively knee-cap large tech companies? If I this were to become a reality and I were a decision maker at a large tech company, I'd opt to pay you from the Japanese subsidiary - just 'cause.
I assume this means new integration with the Windows shell since Microsoft has provided cli support since the December 2017 preview build of Windows 10 by shipping libarchive and bsdtar with Windows.
94 comments
[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadJust copy the 7zip interface in file explorer and you're done. It already feels native.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIH_syndrome
Windows has been called many times for bundling software since it hurts other software companies. Which leads to government regulation. It is sad since I think probably the windows solution could be better in some cases with the native support.
These days the big ideas have gone away, so the small polish finally gets attention.
Keeps all kinds of features that are table stakes in Mac OS and Linux out of Windows b/c it's "anticompetitive" to bundle everything a user would want with an OS.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287
https://imgur.com/a/JiSd168
And these are on the M$ store too!
Windows = Microsoft program OneDrive = Microsoft program Extract tool = Microsoft program
Microsoft = 2.33 trillion dollar company.
Having 3 programs coded by Microsoft and baked into the operating system or included by default with the OS install actually work together: impossible
The whole system will use between 5x and 50x the energy of just decompressing locally.
Sends a particular message to anyone considering making any tools that work with their products.
So the company that developed it will be fine. You will still need winrar.
This will only have RAR extraction and UNRAR.DLL was deliberately not commercial.
=) plenty of reason to keep win-rar around then.
I also hope wonder how they'll present .tar.gz files in the windows shell. Will you need to open the .gz, then the .tar? Or just one step. The world wonders...
https://imgur.com/a/JiSd168
After changing our data delivery pipeline to bzip2 I patted myself on the back for finding an easy win which significantly reduced data size and increased compression speed. Fast forward a month or two later I get word that one of our clients is having problems uncompressing the data we sent them. It turns out that there were still windows 10 versions out in the wild that don’t support bzip2 zip files. I begrudgingly cursed windows and reverted my change, robbed of my small victory.
It truly is amazing how terrible compression support has been in windows. I could compress a +100GB data archive in under a minute using pigz, but since we had to support windows it would take over 30 minutes to compress the file using deflate. I calculated that with the space savings of gzip we could ship a gzip binary embedded with the data in a smaller size than the deflate data on its own. Unfortunately it was a no-go to ship decompression binaries with embedded data, but I thought it would be a cool idea to use cosmopolitan libc to create a platform agnostic binary which when run uses gzip/bzip/lz4 to quickly decompress the data in a platform agnostic way. I imagine such binaries would be picked up by anti-virus but it would be cool to be able to compress data with the latest algorithms without needing the client to have the matching decompression libraries.
I don't mean to be flippant. But I recently had to convert Phillips proprietary DS2 audio format file to MP3, and purchased Phillips software to do that. And then financials came down hard because it wasn't on the approved software list.
But I do know what a pain some IT shops can be.
I know it's a favorite program of a lot of people but personally I just think that's testament to how bad the situation is on windows.
I've not seen this in practice. Sure, it has a clunky gui, but outside of that 7-zip has excellent windows 10 or less integration and works fine in windows 11 even though the jerkwad potentates at M$ decided to hide the usual explorer options behind a second panel.
If you work IT support in any capacity, you should accept that your job is to solve problems for people who are doing things you either can't do or don't want to do.
Their experience is outside of your wheelhouse, and you are there to make the technology transparent to their job function. If you can't do your job with a glad heart then find a different one.
Have some humility.
tl;dr I wish Microsoft would make it more obvious when you're navigating a compressed file (and thus not a native directory).
I love the seamless Explorer support.
Feels like not getting anything in return from giant corporations making billions of dollars is in the spirit of BSD style open source.
I think its perfectly OK for big companies to use FOSS tools without contributing anything. Why do you care? Authors gave it to the world for free or they would use more restrictive licence.
If the big company really wants some more stuff in it, they will probably contribute or donate anyway.
To me, it seems this is irrelevant methaphysical question that those that don't understand FOSS constantly try to empose. Once you accept money, its a different game, with money comes expectations... If you can't do something for free, and you expect to be payed for everything, you are probably not the one that will advance the field.
I admire people that passionatelly do stuff for nothing but pure passion and sence of accomplishment. That is the world I want to live in.
Yeah, there are predators, but if you really care about it you can probably create defensive strategy to minimize those chances.
If the project is not going full-tilt as a startup, then that juice might not be worth the squeeze. Do maintainers want to add administrative duties to their plate just to maybe preemptively knee-cap large tech companies? If I this were to become a reality and I were a decision maker at a large tech company, I'd opt to pay you from the Japanese subsidiary - just 'cause.
This will be interesting to test. When I last tried this on Windows 10, 7-zip beat Windows handily at decompressing large zip files.