this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Well now I'm definitely not buying it.
I never understood the appeal of paid programs. 7-Zip works equally well and is free and open source software. It integrates much nicer into File Explorer as well.
Supporting the developers??
I agree that 7zip is great (albeit based in Russia, so not something I'm sure I want to support at the moment), but consider for a moment that winrar licencing is primarily aimed at businesses (which is why they don't bother locking personal users out after the trial ends), and for that money you get a certain guarantee of functionality and stability over a long period of time.
There's absolutely no guarantees that 7zip will continue to be developed, or that it will retain it's current features and functionality - the developer can turn it into a Minesweeper clone if they feel like it, and there's nothing a business can do but keep using an outdated and thus potentially dangerous version that will eventually become unusable.
You also get a certain level of customer service and corporate communication between the purchasing company and the production company to help resolve issues, which may not exist at all with the alternative.
It's also not always wise to have your business rely heavily on a tool that only sees development through volunteer work by a limited number of disparate people that may come and go, and while I don't know how large the volunteer base is that works on 7zip (it could be just the one guy, it could be a hundred people), to a company it'll never feel as reliable an option as relying on a tool that sees development and maintenance through a paid, full time staff at an established legal entity company with an established reputation.
And speaking for a moment to that established company bit, consider that winrar's company is based in Berlin, within the European Union and under it's rules and laws, which is a far better proposition from a company's standpoint than having to legally deal with an individual guy inside the Russian Federation, especially one that hasn't actually sold your business a product at all.
Anyway, just a few potential thoughts for why tools that do the same job might be preferred by a business, sorry it got a bit long 😅
I mean, does paying for winrar somehow guarantee that it will keep being actively developed?
No, the fact that businesses pay for it for something of that guarantee despite there being free peer-alternatives means that it is a better guarantee.
When you see businesses electing to pay for something despite free alternatives, there is likely a reason (or a number of them). I've seen free tools go from active maintaining to completely dead in a single update due to the work needed to get it back up and operating with new environment-side changes.
And we've all seen companies go out of business overnight. There's no more guarantee that WinRAR will still be around tomorrow than there is for 7z.
7zip is FOSS, GPL license. Even if the author stops others can step in. Even if nobody does and it stops being actively developed you'll still be able to extract your archives for the foreseeable future. You can still unpack ARC files from the 80s.
Yep, I run a number of Linux distros. Debian to Arch. They all handle 7z with no fuss.
Have you tried PeaZip? It’s algo very good. It’s what I use on MacOS.
On Mac, The Unarchiver is always the correct choice.
No, it isn't! Especially if you want to edit files inside a .zip, which that tool doesn't seem capable to do it, nor creating multiple individual files... Also, if you just want to browse a package to see what it's inside, the GUI does a piss poor job showing you the files/folders.
… You can’t edit files inside a zip file. The program’s just hiding that it’s decompressing and decompressing the whole thing every time you change something.
Zip files are usually just another wrapper around DEFLATE, and compressing each block requires knowledge of the previous block’s compression (Part of LZ77). It’s a streaming format, not a sparse format.
If you edit a text file, it actually just creates a new file because inserting text in the middle means all of the text after changes position. I'd still call that editing an existing file rather than creating a new file based on the previous one plus some edits. The second description might be more technically accurate but it's just unnecessary technical details because it's effectively the first description.
Even going back to the original use of edit, editors would mark up books or articles and then a new copy would need to be created with those edits. I'm having trouble thinking of any cases where edit truly means "change something in place without making a new copy of it with the changes included". I guess small edits with pencil or whiteout can sometimes work.
However, WinRAR in this case is also the one that puts your business at risk.
I like WinRAR for its built-in parity functionality. You can achieve similar results with 7-Zip using PAR2, but having it built right into WinRAR with two options (add a recovery record to each archive, or create separate recovery archives (basically what PAR2 does)) is so much more convenient.
WinRAR is like what..? 30-35 bucks? That's per user, unlimited machines, lifetime license. More than fair I'd say.
WinRAR has so much better UI than 7zip.
I will honestly move away from WinRAR if something better with dark theme is launched.
PeaZip is algo very good and has dark mode. I still prefer 7zip on Windows, but on MacOS is my elected choice.
I have tried PeaZip Multiple times and have always turned away. It has significant startup & load time compared to WinRAR.
Lol wooosh I guess?
Microsoft basically copied WinRAR added it to the OS, back in the windows 7 days you needed WinRAR
Implementing support for a widely used format isn’t “basically copied” and there have been alternatives for decades.
Back in the Windows 7 days you could use 7zip. I've been using it since like XP
WinRar decompresses directly to destination. All other I have tried does it to like c:/tmp (can probably change that though) then copy it over, which is impractical or even impossible with really large files.
That's about it though IMO.
You can decompress directly to the destination with 7zip as well. You just need to use the "extract" button instead of doing a drag and drop.
This is the right answer! Since I never used drag and drop I wasn't ever aware that this was an issue.
According to the FAQ:
Cool thanks for the info, I did it by script but then trere is maybe some option I didn't find...
You sure about that? I’ve decompressed huge files, some time ago, using a 3.5” HDD and if it were like that, it would take much longer than needed because of that overlay you talk about.
And it took the same time as WinRar (͡•_ ͡• )
Downvote all you want, but you can configure WinRAR to decompress directly to source.
I had TB files and just no space to have both a copy and the result, IIRC the speed was also obviously better without copying.
I didn’t downvoted your post, I just made a genuine question, since I’ve never noticed that. I’m just sceptic on what you mentioned. ~~Whenever I have some free time, I’ll try to do a deep test on that one!~~
Edit: No need to do a test, since I never use drag n drop (like mentioned on another comment), my test would always show the same outcome as WinRAR.
does it still let you infinitely have a free trial??
Just blow the dust off that copy of serials2k 🤣
You deserve the updoot sir