What should blow your mind is that it’s 2023 and you still need a separate program to extract compressed files on windows. 😂
Good thing they’re adding native support for it in windows 11. FINALLY.
Microsoft and apple are the reasons boomers have learned helplessness with tech. It helped them sell units in the 90’s to imply you didn’t have to ever consider anything under the hood because it all is supposed to just work like magic. you just hit the switch and let electricity do it’s thing.
it is bad if they don’t realize how simple it is to pump their own gas. That’s about the equivalent of being able to unencrypt your own files. I’d say it’s important enough that you should not be relying on anyone with the potential security of your own personal data.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your distro and why did you settle on that particular one? I’m in the process of trying out different distros in anticipation of eventually moving all my stuff over and getting out of Windows completely, and that was really high praise, lol.
So if you have a moment I’d really appreciate hearing about why you picked the distro you did, because being front loaded is one of the things I’m low key looking for: I don’t know Linux well enough to know what I might need out of the box, so the more that’s already on it the better (no shortage of drive space, fortunately). If it appeals I’ll load it up on a LiveUSB and test drive it myself. Thanks!
I don’t mind. I have two machines that run Linux and one that runs windows.
Main desktop I built last month runs endeavourOS. A 13" laptop that runs Ubuntu. A 15" laptop that runs windows.
I like arch because it is always on the latest software. Some people like to be on the cutting edge and others don’t. I’m the former. But I didn’t want to run vanilla arch because I’m too lazy for maintenance and building my distro from ground up. EndeavourOS is arch with an installer and extra repos. It gives you a solid distro out of the box that you don’t need to do much work on after it’s installed. It just works. Never had an issue. I just update twice or once a week and I’m good to go. I have it set up with btrfs and snapshots in case it does break.
Ubuntu on the laptop because I like Ubuntu on little machines. Every single thing works out of the box. Ubuntu is very neat. A lot of people hate on it and on snaps, but I honestly don’t care. I use what works for me. Anything Linux is good to me and they vary in how good they are. Also, Ubuntu is kind of nostalgic to me. It was the first thing I knew about Linux back in 2013.
But here is the thing, I told you what I use, but it may not work for you. That’s why I love Linux. There is a distro for everyone. You can try what I use and see if you like them, if not keep distro hopping until you settle on something you love like I did. I personally wouldn’t listen to any suggestions on here, Reddit or anywhere on what distro to use (that’s just me btw). I distro hopped for almost two years until I settled on what I have now. Hope this helps.
Thank you for your response, this is exactly the info I was looking for. It may not work for me, but knowing WHY someone else loves it tells me a lot about it. I listen to every suggestion, but I first tried Linux back in the 90s: I’m not really swayed by emotive pleas because I’ve already heard them all. (The first time I ever heard that joke about if OSs were airlines and Unix/Linux would be the one where people brought the parts and assembled it on the runway while fighting the entire time was around that same period; it has only ever gotten to be even more true over the ages, lol.)
At this point I have over a dozen LiveUSB or install sticks and I’m just rotating through them, spending a week or two on the distros I like. I’m on Zorin OS right now, which is on the list because it claims to have great Windows app support out of the box, and it’s great but I still need to test that part (and I’m procrastinating because it’s a major pain in the ass but I will eventually).
EndeavourOS is one of the ones I keep hearing about, and it’s very high on the list at distrowatch.com, but I don’t really hear about it from the folks that use it so this is exactly what I was looking for. I really appreciate you taking the time to spell out what you’re using on what hardware and why, it cuts out a lot of the chaff that inevitably flies around distro choices. “Yeah, I know you like [____], but WHY does it work for you?” is a lot more helpful, and you gave me that. EndeavourOS is absolutely on my list now, and knowing that it comes preloaded with everything I might ever need helps a lot. Thank you again.
Of course. Good luck to ya. Make sure to post your questions here on this community if you run into any issues. I’ve noticed that the Linux “sub”/community over here on Lemmy is way more relaxed than on Reddit. You can ask questions, you can post random shit and no one will yell at you. Mods can sometimes be a pain in the ass on reddit.
If you’re new, Ubuntu (or one of its variants, like Xubuntu or Kubuntu) or Linux Mint are great “safe” options. The only thing to consider with Mint is that there is only an LTS release so you will end up with older versions of some programs. I’ve been using Linux as my primary OS for 17 years but I will still throw Xubuntu on a laptop if I just want to get something up and running quickly - other than having some extra packages installed out of the box there’s nothing “wrong” with it.
That said I use openSUSE Tumbleweed as my daily driver. I like the rolling release and cutting edge packages, plus I like that YaST allows me to install the system exactly the way I want - picking and choosing individual packages.
Thank you so much for your response. I have tried Mint; it ran perfectly out of the box with zero issues on a 13 year old laptop; I just didn’t care for the Cinnamon DE so I have it on my list to try again with a different DE. Snaps aren’t too much of an issue because it supports other repositories.
I’ve also tried OpenSUSE Leap but not Tumbleweed; I think I had to do the full install (no LiveUSB) but as an OS it was great. I ran it for a week but had some video issues with it, weird horizontal lines that go across the screen for a few seconds at boot, shut down, and login. Not a deal killer but I’ve set it aside for right now while I try other distros. (One thing I love so far about the Arch distros is that the online knowledge base is truly easy for someone with basic tech knowledge but no Linux knowledge to find what they need.) Really appreciate you taking the time to respond, thank you!
I’m willing to bet a big part of that are all the antitrust lawsuits they got for internet explorer and windows media player back in the day and just not wanting to open that box as it comes to rarlab.
.zip support they’ve had for well over two decades though.
Windows’ built in unzipping tool has really messed up my system before by uncompressing files wrong in subtle ways. I’ll always prefer to use a program made by a third party whose livelihood depends on the quality of their software over some value-add baked in junk.
There is a certain sense of old friend that you know by heart, I’ve downloaded so much things where the last step was to pass it by WinRAR, but yeah I should change when there are proofs like that
I just feel like that people who are still opening RAR files are technically savvy enough to have moved on from WinRAR
Edit: and the people who would still use it aren’t really opening archives anymore so I don’t know who this is affecting. Maybe they have corporate contracts.
Isnt the FOSS thingie all the hype around lemmy? Feel like every discussion tends to drift towards FOSS topics (ironic, I know) and if an app with proprietary modules will be hated to hell and back.
The only thing I missed switching to 7zip was the UX. 7zip is a bit weird at first, but then you find out that it will extract lots of installers. So now you can just get the wifi driver and not the bloatware that comes along with it, and it’s all good.
The reason WinRAR was useful to me allllllll those years ago was for one thing and one thing only: You could split an archive into chunks. So mostly I found that it was good for getting my warez in 1.44MB chunks.
Why not? I prefer it over 7-Zip because it has built-in parity both in the archive itself and as separate files. You can achieve the latter with 7-Zip using PAR, but it’s just more convenient to have it built-in for both parity creation and recovery.
I also feel like it’s consuming a lot less RAM while compressing at similar speeds and achieving similar, if not sometimes better (RAR5), results.
Just because it had a zero-day bug that has already been fixed doesn’t mean it’s bad software. I wouldn’t be surprised if zero-days came to light in other archival software. 7-Zip isn’t magically immune to this.
WinRAR also has clever password and encryption features. (Set short master password, quickly encrypt/decrypt any saved very long passwords.) Integration is great. Updates are regular. I only wish the UI would be updated a bit (more than just icon packs, dark mode).
Blows my mind that anyone still uses WinRAR when 7zip exists.
What should blow your mind is that it’s 2023 and you still need a separate program to extract compressed files on windows. 😂 Good thing they’re adding native support for it in windows 11. FINALLY.
Windows has had native unzip support since Microsoft Plus! 98 added it to Windows 98 in 1998.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Plus!#:~:text=ZIP file integration with Windows Explorer was first introduced with this version under the name of "compressed folders".
Yeah, it just sucks.
Same for Macs. They technically support zipping and unzipping, they’re just bad at it. It’s so stupid.
How so? I’ve always found finder did a good job.
There’s a maximum file size, I forget what it is. And it also can’t handle zips in multiple pieces.
That’s where bash comes in 😎
Finder is an abortion, there is not a single thing it does well
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I don’t recall anyone having Plus! back then.
I think we did.
But it was added to base Windows in XP anyway.
You do on Linux as well, it’s just installed by default.
For my personal use, Linux has every single thing I need right out of the box. That’s why it’s my main OS.
Your chosen GNU/Linux distribution installs the applications.
unrar is in busybox
Microsoft and apple are the reasons boomers have learned helplessness with tech. It helped them sell units in the 90’s to imply you didn’t have to ever consider anything under the hood because it all is supposed to just work like magic. you just hit the switch and let electricity do it’s thing.
That’s not an inherently bad thing though, same as it’s not inherently bad that not everyone can repair their car, or sew up tears in their trousers.
it is bad if they don’t realize how simple it is to pump their own gas. That’s about the equivalent of being able to unencrypt your own files. I’d say it’s important enough that you should not be relying on anyone with the potential security of your own personal data.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your distro and why did you settle on that particular one? I’m in the process of trying out different distros in anticipation of eventually moving all my stuff over and getting out of Windows completely, and that was really high praise, lol.
So if you have a moment I’d really appreciate hearing about why you picked the distro you did, because being front loaded is one of the things I’m low key looking for: I don’t know Linux well enough to know what I might need out of the box, so the more that’s already on it the better (no shortage of drive space, fortunately). If it appeals I’ll load it up on a LiveUSB and test drive it myself. Thanks!
I don’t mind. I have two machines that run Linux and one that runs windows. Main desktop I built last month runs endeavourOS. A 13" laptop that runs Ubuntu. A 15" laptop that runs windows. I like arch because it is always on the latest software. Some people like to be on the cutting edge and others don’t. I’m the former. But I didn’t want to run vanilla arch because I’m too lazy for maintenance and building my distro from ground up. EndeavourOS is arch with an installer and extra repos. It gives you a solid distro out of the box that you don’t need to do much work on after it’s installed. It just works. Never had an issue. I just update twice or once a week and I’m good to go. I have it set up with btrfs and snapshots in case it does break.
Ubuntu on the laptop because I like Ubuntu on little machines. Every single thing works out of the box. Ubuntu is very neat. A lot of people hate on it and on snaps, but I honestly don’t care. I use what works for me. Anything Linux is good to me and they vary in how good they are. Also, Ubuntu is kind of nostalgic to me. It was the first thing I knew about Linux back in 2013.
But here is the thing, I told you what I use, but it may not work for you. That’s why I love Linux. There is a distro for everyone. You can try what I use and see if you like them, if not keep distro hopping until you settle on something you love like I did. I personally wouldn’t listen to any suggestions on here, Reddit or anywhere on what distro to use (that’s just me btw). I distro hopped for almost two years until I settled on what I have now. Hope this helps.
Thank you for your response, this is exactly the info I was looking for. It may not work for me, but knowing WHY someone else loves it tells me a lot about it. I listen to every suggestion, but I first tried Linux back in the 90s: I’m not really swayed by emotive pleas because I’ve already heard them all. (The first time I ever heard that joke about if OSs were airlines and Unix/Linux would be the one where people brought the parts and assembled it on the runway while fighting the entire time was around that same period; it has only ever gotten to be even more true over the ages, lol.)
At this point I have over a dozen LiveUSB or install sticks and I’m just rotating through them, spending a week or two on the distros I like. I’m on Zorin OS right now, which is on the list because it claims to have great Windows app support out of the box, and it’s great but I still need to test that part (and I’m procrastinating because it’s a major pain in the ass but I will eventually).
EndeavourOS is one of the ones I keep hearing about, and it’s very high on the list at distrowatch.com, but I don’t really hear about it from the folks that use it so this is exactly what I was looking for. I really appreciate you taking the time to spell out what you’re using on what hardware and why, it cuts out a lot of the chaff that inevitably flies around distro choices. “Yeah, I know you like [____], but WHY does it work for you?” is a lot more helpful, and you gave me that. EndeavourOS is absolutely on my list now, and knowing that it comes preloaded with everything I might ever need helps a lot. Thank you again.
Of course. Good luck to ya. Make sure to post your questions here on this community if you run into any issues. I’ve noticed that the Linux “sub”/community over here on Lemmy is way more relaxed than on Reddit. You can ask questions, you can post random shit and no one will yell at you. Mods can sometimes be a pain in the ass on reddit.
If you’re new, Ubuntu (or one of its variants, like Xubuntu or Kubuntu) or Linux Mint are great “safe” options. The only thing to consider with Mint is that there is only an LTS release so you will end up with older versions of some programs. I’ve been using Linux as my primary OS for 17 years but I will still throw Xubuntu on a laptop if I just want to get something up and running quickly - other than having some extra packages installed out of the box there’s nothing “wrong” with it.
That said I use openSUSE Tumbleweed as my daily driver. I like the rolling release and cutting edge packages, plus I like that YaST allows me to install the system exactly the way I want - picking and choosing individual packages.
Thank you so much for your response. I have tried Mint; it ran perfectly out of the box with zero issues on a 13 year old laptop; I just didn’t care for the Cinnamon DE so I have it on my list to try again with a different DE. Snaps aren’t too much of an issue because it supports other repositories.
I’ve also tried OpenSUSE Leap but not Tumbleweed; I think I had to do the full install (no LiveUSB) but as an OS it was great. I ran it for a week but had some video issues with it, weird horizontal lines that go across the screen for a few seconds at boot, shut down, and login. Not a deal killer but I’ve set it aside for right now while I try other distros. (One thing I love so far about the Arch distros is that the online knowledge base is truly easy for someone with basic tech knowledge but no Linux knowledge to find what they need.) Really appreciate you taking the time to respond, thank you!
And often, you need two! I use both gzip and tar all the time
Same with Mac OS, it’s such a fucking no brainer and it’s not hard to impl
What could possibly go wrong.
Not like zip is supported and Windows added (finally tbf) support for other archives.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/23/23734625/microsoft-windows-11-rar-support-native
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I’m willing to bet a big part of that are all the antitrust lawsuits they got for internet explorer and windows media player back in the day and just not wanting to open that box as it comes to rarlab.
.zip support they’ve had for well over two decades though.
Windows’ built in unzipping tool has really messed up my system before by uncompressing files wrong in subtle ways. I’ll always prefer to use a program made by a third party whose livelihood depends on the quality of their software over some value-add baked in junk.
FUCK WINRAR!
it’s so stupid and amazing this recent celebration of people that are proud to have paid for it.
It was never a good solution really…
It just worked for what it was for a time… Because it was better than WinZip or pkzip.
7-zip has been amazing for years…
Better OS support would be cool too but it’s so unnecessary thanks to 7zip.
WinRAR was great for the time and their policies on paying for the program were extremely generous. Time just overtook it.
People on Lemmy sometimes get really angry at the dumbest things.
You don’t like Winrar, that’s your right, chill dude.
Well it would blow your mind to know that many people just use whatever they know that does the job
There is a certain sense of old friend that you know by heart, I’ve downloaded so much things where the last step was to pass it by WinRAR, but yeah I should change when there are proofs like that
We hate WinRAR now?
I just feel like that people who are still opening RAR files are technically savvy enough to have moved on from WinRAR
Edit: and the people who would still use it aren’t really opening archives anymore so I don’t know who this is affecting. Maybe they have corporate contracts.
Not hate but we graduate to 7zip.
Isnt the FOSS thingie all the hype around lemmy? Feel like every discussion tends to drift towards FOSS topics (ironic, I know) and if an app with proprietary modules will be hated to hell and back.
Oh, I’ve somehow never seen anyone express that 7zip is FOSS; I didn’t realize that. This should be the first thing anyone points out about it.
It’s pretty old, there’s a whole meme around it
https://www.reddit.com/r/PaidForWinRAR/
WinRAR had a great gui and it integrates much better (imho) into windows than 7zip, only thing 7zip has going for it is it’s free.
If we are talking command line, rar is free (inb4 Unix guys butt in)
The only thing I missed switching to 7zip was the UX. 7zip is a bit weird at first, but then you find out that it will extract lots of installers. So now you can just get the wifi driver and not the bloatware that comes along with it, and it’s all good.
doesn’t WinRAR do certain things that 7zip doesn’t?
I can’t think of what 7zip lacks, but I know it does lack some features
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lol
Exactly!
And it’s the only thing WinRAR does that 7zip doesn’t… Besides all the things 7zio does better… Like compression… 😂
The reason WinRAR was useful to me allllllll those years ago was for one thing and one thing only: You could split an archive into chunks. So mostly I found that it was good for getting my warez in 1.44MB chunks.
Anon: hey Krudler, do you have a cracked copy of GTA3
Krudler: say no more, friend
Sends 350 floppy disks with the cracked game
Yes. That splitting files was especially useful because emails used to have attachment size limits.
Afaik, the only thing 7Zip lacks in comparison to WinRAR is the ability to create rar files, and that’s only because the format is proprietary.
this is true I actually needed to get winrar to install a free game I acquired lately 7z would not open it properly for some reason
Why not? I prefer it over 7-Zip because it has built-in parity both in the archive itself and as separate files. You can achieve the latter with 7-Zip using PAR, but it’s just more convenient to have it built-in for both parity creation and recovery.
I also feel like it’s consuming a lot less RAM while compressing at similar speeds and achieving similar, if not sometimes better (RAR5), results.
Just because it had a zero-day bug that has already been fixed doesn’t mean it’s bad software. I wouldn’t be surprised if zero-days came to light in other archival software. 7-Zip isn’t magically immune to this.
I don’t get why someone would prefer rar over zip and 7z.
Even tar.gz and all their flavors are more common.
Yeah, well technically .cab is more common than tar.gz but that doesn’t mean I’d start using it.
I personally use RAR because I think it’s a better format than ZIP, but I use ZIP when I have to share the archive with anyone.
WinRAR also has clever password and encryption features. (Set short master password, quickly encrypt/decrypt any saved very long passwords.) Integration is great. Updates are regular. I only wish the UI would be updated a bit (more than just icon packs, dark mode).
There’s the occasional RAR archive 7-Zip doesn’t open for me, but WinRAR does. 🤷🏻
If you’re on Windows (I know I know, switch to Linux) I prefer NanaZip over base 7zip
https://github.com/M2Team/NanaZip