manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 19, 2011 i'm going to do some archive packing (and unpacking)... and i have to decide between these two... reading on both these tools are comparable, but i notice that RAR is proprietary where as 7zip is OSS, so i'm curious what you guys think i should chooseand also what your experiences are with these two tools... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted October 20, 2011 I would use tar, and gzip the tar file. 7zip should be able to read it, but *.gz or *.tgz would be more universal, and should be read by any Unix system as well as 7zip on Windows. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
FirefoxRocks 0 Report post Posted October 20, 2011 Normally I wouldn't understand why someone would put files in zip folders (or other types of archival) unless they were sending them through the Internet. If you need native compatibility across Windows and Linux/UNIX, then go with the zip format. Otherwise I'd highly recommend the .tar.gz or just .gz format, it is still readable in Windows with 7-Zip however is much more commonly using in the Linux/UNIX world. Here is a list of archival, compression and archival/compression formats and information about them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archive_formats Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 21, 2011 thanks guys... i don't do much archiving, was more for unpacking really... on ubuntu software center i came across rar and 7zip so i installed 7zip since i use it on windows Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quatrux 4 Report post Posted October 21, 2011 I would use 7zip instead of RAR, because it's freeware, and RAR isn't free as I know, you can install 7zip and only unpack rar files, but not pack them using RAR.Also, to answer another question, it's also good to archive your files in your computer if you don't use them, for example if you have a directory which is 10-500 MB and you have lots of stuff there, lots of files, all of them together take up much more space in your hard drive than lets say one TAR file...I usually make old folders or other directories to TAR archives, TAR doesn't compress so it's really fast to open it and find what you need, if you need one or two files from it.Furthermore, you win not only space, but fragmentation is less a problem too, even though it depends how you use that file, but I wanted to say, that archiving files is not only beneficial for sending it or storing for others to download it, even though when hard drives are so big Today, it doesn't really matter anymore to save several megabytes Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted October 21, 2011 Precisely as stated : archiving files is for archiving purposes. You archive a lot of files you don't need for daily use, they are present but in archived state ; you bring them back as soon as you need one of them, but you don't need all of them simultaneously available all the time. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 23, 2011 I would use 7zip instead of RAR, because it's freeware, and RAR isn't free as I know, you can install 7zip and only unpack rar files, but not pack them using RAR.Also, to answer another question, it's also good to archive your files in your computer if you don't use them, for example if you have a directory which is 10-500 MB and you have lots of stuff there, lots of files, all of them together take up much more space in your hard drive than lets say one TAR file...I usually make old folders or other directories to TAR archives, TAR doesn't compress so it's really fast to open it and find what you need, if you need one or two files from it.Furthermore, you win not only space, but fragmentation is less a problem too, even though it depends how you use that file, but I wanted to say, that archiving files is not only beneficial for sending it or storing for others to download it, even though when hard drives are so big Today, it doesn't really matter anymore to save several megabytes thanks for the info, RAR seems to work for me fine... when you say RAR isn't free... how come it's available freely on Linux? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Quatrux 4 Report post Posted October 24, 2011 thanks for the info, RAR seems to work for me fine... when you say RAR isn't free... how come it's available freely on Linux? Here is some info from Wikipedia: RAR files may be created only with commercial software WinRAR, RAR, and software that has permission from the licensor Alexander Roshal (Eugene's brother).[2] RAR for Pocket PC is the only freeware for creating RAR files. Third-party programs that can only read (unpack) RAR files include: WinZip (Windows), RarZilla (Windows), 7-Zip (multiplatform), IZArc (Windows), PeaZip (Windows, Linux), Zipeg (Windows, Mac OS X), and ALZip (Windows), along with the free version of unrar (which is available for Linux and FreeBSD). Mac OS X readers include StuffIt Expander, The Unarchiver, UnRarX, and Zipeg. Stuffit Expander is also available for Mac OS Classic with RAR support for this platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAR If you really can create RAR archive on Linux, then maybe the author gave permission, but I never really knew you could do it. Maybe you said, you can unRAR on Linux? For fre you can unRAR on windows too, with the same 7zip. The free software Linux archivers File Roller, Ark, and Xarchiver can use the non-free unrar program to decompress RAR files, if they are found in the system path. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 25, 2011 i know i can unpack with RAR on linux, haven't tried archiving with it though... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
loramchugh 0 Report post Posted February 27, 2013 I would use 7zip instead of RAR, because it's freeware, and RAR isn't free as I know, you can install 7zip and only unpack rar files, but not pack them using RAR. 7zip is released under the GNU General Public License, which makes it free software, not freeware. Freeware is software that does not cost users any money. Free software is software the respects the users' four essential software freedoms, and it has absolutely nothing to do with monetary cost. The word free, in the context of free software, refers only to liberty (a.k.a. freedom). This video explains the four essential software freedoms: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
iGuest 3 Report post Posted February 27, 2013 I usually would avoid using rar because of it being proprietary, which means that a developer maybe required to buy rights to actually have RAR in their compression tool which means having a tool that can work with most compressions maybe not available due to this and it won't be standard on some Linux distributions. That would mean out of those two options I would pick 7zip.However, if you were wanting better compression and also another open source alternative, I would opt for xz, which is a stripped down version of 7zip and in most cases has superior compression over 7zip. xz is probably less known than 7zip and even more so than rar but if more people know about it, and start using it. It could get recognised just as 7zip got it's recognition, which is why I'm spreading it now. You can usually combine tar with xz, tar.xz although still not very common to see a lot of these compressions around yet but it should be heading as a defacto for Linux.Cheers,MC Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
