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[-] LemmyEntertainYou@piefed.social 232 points 2 weeks ago

7zip is better anyway I don't understand why people still use WinRar. Then again I don't understand why people still use Windows either.

[-] blackbeans@lemmy.zip 178 points 2 weeks ago

Not everything is a competition. If people want to support WinRAR after the developer maintained it for more than 30 years and helped out millions of people, that's just fine.

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[-] kurmudgeon@lemmy.world 34 points 2 weeks ago

Or WinZip. I work for a company that literally has the licenses for every computer they own. Why? 7-zip is free.

[-] Waterpumpee@lemmus.org 18 points 2 weeks ago

I could think of stronger password protection options. Maybe some kind of UI. Maybe a way to certify creators of the zip so they can filter out malicious zips in emails. I dont know what WinZip offers but company compliance is a goldmine.

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[-] ms_lane@lemmy.world 26 points 2 weeks ago

I use it on occasion, since it will deflate 100+GB zip files much faster than 7zip will. (7z is single threaded for pkzips)

It's been more than a decade since I used it to compress anything though. LZMA2 rocks.

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[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago

I'm glad you can have a Windows-free existence.

Some things just don't function well on Linux, but there are lots of us who are 99% Linux and don't use Windows unless we have to.

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[-] LuckyDevil@piefed.social 96 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

ITT: The most politically charged discussion of compression software I've ever read...

[-] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 59 points 2 weeks ago

That's how I know I'm home

[-] mlg@lemmy.world 34 points 2 weeks ago

FOSS users when there's a software that's free but not open source

[-] Rikidar@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago

I make software that’s almost “open source” with the only limitation being that you can’t resell it. I’ve had FOSS users tell me they’d prefer it being proprietary.

[-] RogueBanana@piefed.zip 9 points 2 weeks ago

Surely thats just a couple of weirdos on the extreme side. Did that happen on multiple occasions?

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[-] chmod755@feddit.org 61 points 2 weeks ago

I own a valid WinRAR license!

[-] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Same. I've happily used it for over 2 decades and decided that they actually deserve some money for that. I've since switched to Linux, but don't regret paying for WinRAR at all.

[-] chmod755@feddit.org 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

You can still use it. WinRAR works on Linux with WINE

[-] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 2 weeks ago

Oh God why though

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[-] 0x0@infosec.pub 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Ever since i found out that there is a yearly subscription for winrar on android, ive been paying for it.

I dont even use winrar anymore but it gives the same satisfaction as donating to wikipedia, and its just a few bucks so why not

[-] kokesh@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

I knew someone must exist!

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[-] noxypaws@pawb.social 58 points 2 weeks ago

anyone who still distributes anything compressed with winrar, please just fucking stop

use it for your personal archival purposes if you must, but please just fucking stop using it to share or distribute anything publicly. there's zero reason to use .rar over 7z or zip or tgz or any other open standard

[-] pycorax@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 weeks ago

Does it matter when 7zip handles rar anyways?

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[-] manuremy@sopuli.xyz 50 points 2 weeks ago

Shhh you're a free software

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 102 points 2 weeks ago

Unlike 7-Zip, which is actually free and also open-source as well

7-Zip is by far the best archiving software on Windows

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[-] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 43 points 2 weeks ago

Was expecting this to be an Onion article

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[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 30 points 2 weeks ago

Pay for independently-developed software if you care about it continuing to exist. Steal from corporations all you want. But support independent devs (and small teams) to make sure they can keep maintaining the tools you love and rely on. It's the only way to not get swallowed by the big dogs.

[-] Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org 29 points 2 weeks ago

RAR files just make me "Huh?" as they are nowhere near as good as 7zip, as universal as zip, or as nice as tarballs.

The memory of multi-part rar files being a good way to get big things voer dial-up is kinda long past, they're a relic, in my book.

[-] fizzle@quokk.au 15 points 2 weeks ago

I think theyre still popular on Usenet.

IDK all the history but rar has built in ability to create recovery data / parity volumes.

Parity data is like additional data that can help reconstruct any degradation.

That said, usually a standalone parity generator is used which can work with other types of archives, but rar is what everyone uses so why change.

Compression algos are ineffective on encoded / compressed media anyway.

It used to be important on Usenet, and maybe still is, because if a drive starts to fail somewhere and contains errors those errors can be reproduced across the network. Not sure if thats still a thing or why but certainly 10 years ago it was.

The summary to this rambling comment is: some communities still like rar because its what they've always used and there's no benefit to adopting 7z.

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[-] Kissaki@feddit.org 22 points 2 weeks ago

I've never used WinRAR. I'm a 7-zip ~~fanatic~~ user.

[-] TIEPilot@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago

Its big companies that screw them the most. I have worked for multiple multi billion dollar corporations that will screw Team Viewer over even though its how we get customers into their down servers. And it wasn't one data center, its every data center I have ever worked in (30 years in)

If the license is free, they will screw them.

*I know TV hasn't been around that long, but WinRAR has been and it was another company I saw screwed.

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[-] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago

Makes sense. People finally have tons of disposable income to spread around. /S

Or maybe is just that everything else is so ridiculously expensive that WinRAR seems like a good deal now.

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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
597 points (98.7% liked)

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