Windows 11 adds native support for RAR, 7-Zip, Tar and other archive formats thanks to open-source library
Windows 11 adds native support for RAR, 7-Zip, Tar and other archive formats thanks to open-source library
Windows 11 adds native support for RAR, 7-Zip, Tar and other archive formats thanks to open-source library::undefined
I wonder how long before I can send someone a .7z file without "hurr durr I can't open this".
Like, OpenDocument support exists in Office 2003 and I still encounter those who can't open a .odt file.
#2040 take or leave it
I just tell them to install 7zip. I'm not working around your inadequacy.
Serious question: why would one use .7z when .tar.gz and .tar.xz exist?
Why would you use any of them when zip exists?
For an average user they offer no advantage.
Yeah definitely sounds just as simple /s
For me .zip on Windows is equivalent to .tar.gz on Linux - used when I just want to send a folder in a single file very quickly.
Also handy when sending an archive to a weaker machine, that might take a while to unpack a 7z compressed at the highest setting.
.7z is when I want to send a folder encrypted, or heavily compress something to archive (like a database, documents folder, or disk image/iso). It seemingly does the impossible, shaving the size from say 60GB down to 40GB compressed if you use solid mode (which has downsides if there are multiple files in the archive). It's incredibly flexible, but the defaults are pretty solid for most cases
It's like when .zip was popular I guess?
Tar.gz is a two step thingy too (maybe under the hood 7z is too) so the extraction process always seems long?
.7z and .xz are (essentially) the same compression algorithm but it's applied either to the whole chunk of data, or to individual files. That has its pros and cons.
More practically though windows users don't know what the hell tarballs are, and I've even seen some bonkers handling like turning a tar.gz into a tar first that you then have to unpack.
7z files can be browsed without decompressing the contents, and tar.xyz archives preserve file system attributes like ownership. They have totally different use cases.
If I want to back up a directory on my drive, I would use tar.xz. But if I want to send some documents to other people, I would use 7z.
They're Windows users
Tared files are cancer and should never be used for any reason.
Office support also exists for the majority of editors so why not just use what people are used to?
Why not just send a zip?
There's no advantage to the receiver for either of these.
ODF works on everything. It's reliable and fully documented. The MS office implementation contradicts its own specification and breaks. A lot.
The PK-Zip file format was released in the year 1989. The compression is terrible by modern standards.
Zip almost always results in larger archive files...
Microsoft annonces an actually useful feature for Windows once in a blue moon basically. This is one of them.
But I still hate Windows.
It only took them 20 years to incorporate a handful of mainstream file formats as core features. Give them a medal.
Maybe they'll get around to multithreaded (de)compression in another 20 years.
The medal will be made of copper.
God I'm so sick of Musk spa ... wait, what? Actual technology news?
You are part of the problem by bringing it up where it isn't relevant
As someone who has daily driven Linux on all my devices for about 5 years now, I actually forgot that windows didn't have built in rar, tar and 7zip support. Absolutely bonkers that it took them this long.
they dont even have (s)ftp support built into their file explorer
And Windows still balks at most common filesystems.
They actually removed the old FTP support, it was somewhat still useful for local servers that didn't have samba shares.
To be fair, Windows now has better support than Gnome does natively. I wish they would finally give nautilus seamless archive integration...
Watch as they break it even more. They broke drag and drop between archives and nautilus a while ago and it remains broken to this day.
Does this means I can stop using lha? /s
Microsoft loves opensource. :P
While still using proprietary API and proprietary specs for hardware... you know the thing that gets in the way of FOSS operating systems.
Microsoft loves Azure, anything else is there to draw people in.
Embrace, extend, extinguish
Translation: Microsoft loves using code that other people wrote for free
Like Google and pretty much every other tech giant.
Google are extremely keen on supporting open source when it hits their competitors but when it's about their own business they pretty much avoids ot. They took Linux and created Android... they the practically locked it down by moving more and more essentials into Play Services... which by some of reason isn't open source.
Guarantee that they contributed no code back
They host the biggest open source platform in the world for free. So they do plenty for the open source community.
Github? You mean the one that used a legally questionable AI that borrows code from projects with licenses that don't allow you to do so under certain circumstances?
For history fans:
LZ77 and LZ78 are the two lossless data compression algorithms published in papers by [two Israelis named] Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv in 1977 and 1978... Besides their academic influence, these algorithms formed the basis of several ubiquitous compression schemes, including GIF and the DEFLATE algorithm used in PNG and ZIP.
/thread
Top tier comment
The last two Israeli that did something useful for the society.
This isn't true.
You can count hundreds here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_inventions_and_discoveries
Guess now pirates have to standardise on a new proprietary format.
This is great, but I honestly hate the way that windows treats zips like they are just folders on your computer when they are fundamentally different, and I want to do different things with them. Sure, it's nice to be able to browse the files inside, but I can do that with 7zip.
The whole point is most people don't want a third party app.
I also think for most users treating them as a normal folder makes complete sense.
Chances are you aren't the target audience of the default configuration of windows. It's aimed at people who have trouble checking their email.
It's aimed at people who have trouble checking their email.
Opening ZIP natively in folder app really is just user friendly practices. Ofc it's easier to able to browse its content that way.
You shouldn't need 3rd party software for things that simple.
Chances are you aren't the target audience of the default configuration of windows.
Yes. How to change it?
Maybe they're like that because they've been trained that way by shit software
It's nice when you can use the file browser of an app and I can open a file from a zip directly but I see your point.
Yeah, it's probably best for most users, but I just personally prefer to treat them separately so I know what I'm dealing with.
That's pretty cool. Please give us our objectively-more-efficient taskbar layouts back and I'll consider "upgrading" my desktop?
When I was offered a free sample, win11 ran slower and controls were walled off from the control panel and access instructions were behind paywalls. Also some of my games wouldn't play.
Me also can't stand the changed control panel UI. Most of the times I just hit WIN+R and type "control"
I have Windows 11 on my laptop but 10 on my desktop. 11 was a mess and is still a mess. Don't get me wrong, 10, 8, 7, and Vista were that way too for like a year or two. But I feel like a lot of 11's problems are not going to be solved by bug-fixing.
I'm curious, how is the centering of it any less efficient than left aligning it?
When the start menu was left aligned, you can move you mouse infinitely to the lower left and still click it irrespective of the initial location of the mouse (There is a term for this concept in UX design called infinite space or similar). For similar reasons, the close (x) button is in the upper right corner.
However with the start menu in the center, you have to accurately place the mouse on the start icon and there cannot be a muscle memory since the movement depends on the initial location.
Also you can left-align win 11
If they're incorporating open libraries, Hopefully support for real filesystems will be next
Humm, I doubt it as NTFS has ACLs built in to FS directly, so far I don't know if Linux FS has that feature, I know that ACLs exists in the Linux file world, but I don't know if they are built in durectly in the FS.
How would it be any different to the various FAT filesystems it supports now?
Pretty much all Linux FS support ACLs and have for an eternity.
The thing is that nobody uses ACLs because the good ole user/group/world rwx scheme is much less of a hassle to work with in 99.9% of the cases and the remaining 0.01% can still be done.
Does it support password protected archives yet?
Nope, not yet
Nope, according to the File Explorer section under Highlights here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/october-31-2023-kb5031455-os-builds-22621-2506-and-22631-2506-preview-6513c5ec-c5a2-4aaf-97f5-44c13d29e0d4
"Note This features does not support password encrypted files."
Windows has been able to open ZipCrypto encrypted archives for a while now
If these are created in 7zip there is some secure setting that has to be disabled, otherwise Windows can't open them
Guess it's time to finally buy a WinRar license
Another actually genuine useful update, so...
TIME TO BUY A WINRAR LICENSE!!!
...and kids, this is why you (A)GPLv3 your code. Always.
I feel like this will only make life easier for everyone. I hate Windows as much as the next guy but this will help open archive formats be more accessible.
I understand the sentiment, but I do not come to the same conclusion that of increasing accessibility via offering more features in unfree proprietary software. The intended consequences of this were publicised by US Justice Department in their uncovering of Microsoft's memo labelled Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish which outlines how this eventually leads to less, not more, accessibility.
That aside, Microsoft Windows already supported ZIP which is an open standard. The addition of RAR, which is a proprietary unfree standard, is actually less open.
On macOS, the default double click behavior just unzips the archive into a folder of the same name with no additional interface. I always thought that was a nicer implementation than opening the archive to browse the files how Linux distros usually do (and maybe Windows; I’m not a frequent Windows user). It’s probably what 90% of people want 90% of the time. Why not just make that the default and put the other use cases behind the right click menu?
Who unzips archives before you even know what's in it? That's madness.
You can do that in Windows and Linux (kde at least), it's just part of the right-click context menu, which makes far more sense to me.
Edit: I just remembered that a Mac mouse only has one button lol
Most importantly on KDE you have "extract archive here, autodetect subfolder". Having Ark be a different program than Dolphin is also the right choice as archives aren't directories.
Also if you ever fucking make a tarball that doesn't have a top-level directory and exactly one directory at the top level everyone officially hates you.
(And yes for some unfathomable reason kde calls directories folders)
I often want to extract just a few files from an archive, so no.
Would that really be safe though? I wouldn't want everything to unzip without checking first what's inside.
I don't think it's in any way unsafe, unless something is very wrong with the in-archiving software, in which case viewing it would likely have the same vulnerability. Files existing I don't think can cause any harm, again without some severe vulnerability somewhere along the chain. Running them is the issue.
Windows does basically what you think it does.
And I'd rather it not unzip the contents of a file that I haven't looked at yet. I also sometimes only need one or two files from the zip folder and don't want to unzip the entire thing.
They updated the computers at work to W11 and they really fucked up the basic notepad app. It has tabs now and reopens my last draft instead of a new blank window.
And I'm still going to use WinZip anyway.
Install Linux already...
You have a point, but you're being insufferable about it.
I know that I might be a bit insufferable on this point, but I feel it bears repeating over and over. Somebody has got to do it, Microsoft fucked over this world and people still believe that Linux is decades behind windows whilst in reality it's leaps and bounds ahead. Yet people keep paying for windows shit.
People need to hear this shit, like it or not
Still gonna use 7zip, the default Windows packing/unpacking interface is atrocious.
Honestly though if they just added "extract to {archivename}" as a right click option it would cover more than 90% of my usage.
I love KDE's "extract here, autodetect folder" feature for compressed files
Literally the reason why 7 zip is the first thing I install on a windows machine.
All the linux file managers I use have that context menu built in, so nothing else to install 😅 except that I also sometimes use 7zip file manager via WINE because I like a GUI
Ditto.
Have you used Windows recently? This option currently exists as a right-click option in Windows 11.
Check out NanaZip
Fun fact "nana" means 7 in Japanese.
Its what i use now its really nice
Which is an incredible effort, very few software have an interface more atrocious than 7zip.
The UI is the main reason I actually paid for a WinRAR license.
I don't use the interface, that's the thing. I just use the contextual menu - which is more than enough to operate it easily. If the windows version of it had the same, then I wouldn't mind at all.