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Why do people even download WinRAR? For the odd occasion I need to extract a WinRAR archive, the free and open source 7-zip works fine. It also handles a number of other formats, and is fast. (For example, it is MUCH faster at extracting ZIP archives than Windows Explorer).

7-Zip uses YEAR.REVISION scheme for version numbers.

Interesting, but not entirely accurate. If you believe their version history, 9.20 stable release date was 2010-11-18; 9.38 beta date was 2015-01-03. The next version listed is 15.05 beta on 2015-06-14.
Well... maybe they NOW use a year revision scheme, but that didn't start until 15.05, apparently.

First, the history you linked isn't complete. The 7-Zip history appears to recognize only those versions where Igor Pavlov released source code, which he doesn't do for all pre-release versions, particularly those he classifies as alphas, e.g. v15.00 through 15.03. There is a comment to his v15.00 announcement which complains about his source code release/commit practices.

AIUI, the YEAR.REVISION scheme is always applied whenever the major version is changed, so for example, v4.00 alpha was released in 2004, and the first release after that was v4.20 in 2005. I cannot tell why Igor has ever bumped the major version, including v15.00, where there is no obvious major change compared to other betas/alphas before it. Maybe he added support for another compiler (e.g. latest MSVC) with v15.00, though that is only my guess. For all I know, on the first day of every month he rolls an old AD&D D20 for a saving throw versus major version increment, which he apparently failed on 01 April of last year - good thing it wasn't a red dragon breath attack...

- T

"7-Zip uses YEAR.REVISION scheme for version numbers."

Interesting, but not entirely accurate. If you believe their version history, 9.20 stable release date was 2010-11-18; 9.38 beta date was 2015-01-03. The next version listed is 15.05 beta on 2015-06-14.
Well... maybe they NOW use a year revision scheme, but that didn't start until 15.05, apparently.

Ok, so I read the article and my collegues and I use 7-zip quite a bit - so I am trying to figure out if the vulnerability was addressed in the latest release

I see the article was posted on the 11th, and 7-zip's latest builds seems to be v 16.0 which was published on 5/10 ... but looking at the 7-zip fix history:

http://www.7-zip.org/history.t...

All I see is that "some bugs were fixed" - this does not fill me with confidence.

So, I'm just trying to decide if the may 10 update and May 11 release is enough circumstantial evidence to say "ahh v16 fixes this so just update and we're good (assuming we don't have any other tools that bake in vulnerable past 7-zip sdk builds)

My guess is that updating to 16.0 will likely fix this in my directly installed copy of 7-zip.... though I don't like going on hope and circumstantial evidence.

Anytime anyone touts their new lossless compression algorithm, I immediately ask "Yeah but does it beat my 7-Zip profile?".
The answer is either "no" or "yes but only in very specific cases" (and in those cases I could write a filter for 7-Zip to compress those specific cases with a better algorithm) or "yes, it is WinRAR".

7-Zip recently added ( http://www.7-zip.org/history.t... ) support for decompressing the new RAR format, so go ahead and compare them yourself.
They're pretty much neck and neck. I believe WinRAR's archives offer better resilience to damage, as well.

7-Zip is by far the easiest way to do this. Select files, right-click, 7-Zip, Add to archive... and if you supply a password and check "encrypt file names" the whole archive is AES-256 encrypted with the password you used. Upload that bad boy and feel more secure. On the other end, download it, right-click, "extract here" and then delete the 7z file. It's just one extra step prior to upload and after download and the shell integration makes it dead simple. If you're on Linux using p7zip at a command prompt, "7za a -mhe archive_name.7z file_and_dir_names_go_here -p" and it'll prompt for a password.

You paid for WinZip? That bloated piece of crap? When there's only about three dozen different free compression applications? You don't even have to resort to classical freeware, there are FOSS programs that will do the job quite nicely, with a polished GUI for those who don't like CLIs.

7-zip is my favourite.

Does nearly all of the formats I come across.
Open Source, LGPL (where possible) and fully cross-platform.

In my toolkit via Portable Apps everywhere I go.

you can extract the jre from the download using 7-zip.

download the 7-zip .msi installer.
extract and run 7-zip:
    msiexec /a /qb TARGETDIR=%TEMP%
    %TEMP%\Files\7-Zip\7zFM.exe

then download the JRE Offline-install from oracle.

navigate to the JRE download in 7zFM and extract it. inside you'll find a 'core.zip' archive. extract that, that's the JRE.

I think you presumed wrong. 7-zip file manager has had that feature for a loooooong time.

http://www.7-zip.org/ is the official 7-zip distribution site. If you get it from elsewhere, good luck.

The client is plain, straightforward and easy to set up, and it can decompress many compression formats (including RAR).

Full Windows shell integration built in.

I use 7-zip for this purpose, however there's also a Windows version of Info-Zip if you'd prefer that.

Thats because the top end calculators are not just for performing arithmetic calculations: they are equivalent of a cut down version of Maple or Mathematica. However much does one of those application cost on the PC?

It costs seven times zip, which still equals zip.

Yes, Maxima costs the same as 7-Zip. Both are free software under a GNU license.

My god, Wine has no use whatsoever

First... nLite isn't for commercial use.

Second...

1) Serial number update scripts, RunOnceEx
2) Slipstreamed textmode drivers. (Unpack the chipset SATA drivers and use the integrate option on the .inf files)
3) Unpack them with 7-zip or Universal Extractor
4) Other tools? I only maintain my home PCs, so I just download the patches to a share and install them manually.

BTW mod this informative.

Opera/Firefox (whichever has a newer version that still supports 98)

That would be Opera. Firefox, as of Firefox 3, no longer supports Windows 98 (this caused a lot of grumbling on Firefox's support forums), but the latest Opera happily runs on Windows 98.

I can also write my own apps for it in Delphi7 (Delphi does not work on Linux)

If you're an old-school Delphi programmer, you might look in to Lazarus. It's 95% Delphi, but FOSS software.

While I'm mainly a C programmer these days, I've quite impressed with Delphi: There is an excellent tiny little Civilization clone, C-evo, out there written in Delphi (that fits on a single floppy if you remove the sounds and 7-zip compress it), as well as a free (beer) office suite called SSuiteSoft.

Security essentials is free for business, so replace AVG with that:

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

7Zip is free and OSS. Replace Winzip with that. Heck, XP has its own zip handler installed. A lot of techies assumed that XP needs a zip program because 2000 didnt have one. Get rid of it.

http://www.7-zip.org/

PDFCreator is free and OSS. It can make PDFs. Most people just need to make them, not 'edit' them.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Security Essentials for business use is against the EULA. Try Clamwin instead, its open source.

With 7-zip. Consider making a donation too, of course.

Security essentials is free for business, so replace AVG with that:

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

7Zip is free and OSS. Replace Winzip with that. Heck, XP has its own zip handler installed. A lot of techies assumed that XP needs a zip program because 2000 didnt have one. Get rid of it.

http://www.7-zip.org/

PDFCreator is free and OSS. It can make PDFs. Most people just need to make them, not 'edit' them.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

As a developer you should be fully aware of the fact that you can extract the files from the MSI if you really want to. I'll help though. For most MSI files a simple:

msiexec /a filename.msi /qb TARGETDIR=C:\tmpdir

Also, 7zip seems to be able to extract .msi's as well like they were ZIP files:

http://www.7-zip.org/

I just tried it with a .msi I had lying around and was able to right-click-extract it to a new folder really easily.

It's not just about sticker price, and "FOSS beyond Linux servers" is pretty broad.

I'm a tech writer/UI designer/sometimes web guy at a small (~75 employees) ISV. Our company uses, and even prefers, FOSS when it suits us. Our two head IT guys are Linux nerds like me, which helps.

Basically, the F/OSS software we use falls into one of several categories (this only includes the software I use in my roles, and that I encountered during a stint in QA).

1. FOSS software that sees regular use.
   • Linux: It powers our web and mail servers. Our QA guys use Linux + VMWare to test our (Windows-based) server software. I've been offered a Linux workstation for a web-based project I'm working on, but XP+IIS may be the only solution.*
   • Audacity: We use this to record voice tracks for Captivate demos.
   • 7-zip: Every workstation has this.
   • Firefox: Again, the company standard.
   • Notepad++: A few of us have this for editing raw HTML/CSS/XML/etc.
   • OpenOffice: Don't get excited, Office 2003 is still our bread and butter. This lives on my secondary workstation for simple one-off tasks.
2. OSS software that was tried but failed
   • GIMP: This was before I started at the company, and at the time it couldn't equal Paint Shop Pro (which is what we use now).
   • Scribus: We tried this before caving and purchasing FrameMaker 8. Scribus simply can't match the features or (more importantly) training resources of FrameMaker.

We also use Lotus Notes, which is based on Eclipse.

* I have 2 XP workstations so that I can run every product I might need to document, some of which must be run simultaneously on separate machines. Neither machine is up to spec for Xen or VMWare.

It amazes me that this employee chose illegal means of getting an archiving program instead of using a FOSS solution such as 7-zip ( http://www.7-zip.org/).

I know some companies have protocols for handling FOSS software, but this should have never have happened if the employee had just turned to his company's legal department for obtaining software licenses.

From the files I've seen on this disc, the krack wasn't the type to register winrar, it was the type to remove/recover the password on a rar archive.

Last I checked, 7zip would not read rar files, let alone extract the password of the rar file for you, nor do I know of any free open source program to extract/remove the password on a rar file (Though I must admit I haven't looked for one.)

Even if there is another DVD different from mine with the actual 'register or remove the nag screen of winrar' type of krack, I still don't think OSS would help much here.
The OSS rar tools are very limited in what they can do with rar files (different archive formats? maybe extensions? I know that happened with .zip)
Plus the linux unrar tool I use is still not free software really, just free to use for end users. This means either ASUS would still not be allowed to distribute it by license, or they must pay for the license to do so just like with winrar, so would have gone the same route.

With so many people talking about this krack as if it was the type to register the winrar program itself, I am seriously wondering if there are multiple versions of this recovery DVD out there, and my copy is different...
Or are people just assuming as they go? Am I missing something?

Then again WinRAR has no purpose. 7zip ( http://www.7-zip.org/ ) is superior and free, actually even Open Source.

"It amazes me that this employee chose illegal means of getting an archiving program instead of using a FOSS solution such as 7-zip ( http://www.7-zip.org/)."

Why should it be surprising? The idea that attitudes don't have consequences should have been debunked.

7zip supports rar, arj, zip, 7z, cab, iso, etc. etc., and it is a free program, unlike winRAR or WinZip. And it works very nicely.

This is only partially true. 7zip supports 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR fully. The other formats are "unzip" only. So no-go if you need to compress with RAR (the original thread). Too bad because RAR is amazing on database backups. I often get 90% + compression on multigig SQL server backups - much higher than zip or built in compression in backup utilities.

7zip supports rar, arj, zip, 7z, cab, iso, etc. etc., and it is a free program, unlike winRAR or WinZip. And it works very nicely.

Which, for the benefit of those who have never used 7-Zip, fully supports unpacking RAR archives out of the box without having to have unrar or WinRAR at all.

Now if you want to make RAR files, then you'll need rar or WinRAR. But also you should note that 7-Zip's native 7z format gets rather better compression than RAR. ;)

And without the proprietary zip container here.

Proprietary? I'm pretty sure the compress/decompress utility is opensource.

If you go to the actual 7-zip web site and look in the right-hand column there is a link to jZip, so it seems highly unlikely that the 7-zip author is unhappy with them.

Or just use 7zip. http://www.7-zip.org/

Better compression than RAR, and Open Source!

Runs on and probably your toaster.

"... even Chuck Bigelow's Lucida has been supplanted."

I just tried the Consolas font, and I like it better than Lucida Console, my previous favorite font for programming.

Here's how to get the fonts: Download Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer. It is 25 Megabytes. View the file, PowerPointViewer.exe, in WinZip or another archive viewer, such as the excellent, free, open source, Windows, Linux, OS X, 7-Zip. Then view the file inside the archive, ppviewer.cab. The fonts are inside the .CAB file.

Haven't you heard of http://www.7-zip.org/? Or am I just misunderstanding what your saying?

FoxIt PDF reader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/
7-zip file archiver: http://www.7-zip.org/

I like Opera, modo, foobar2000, VLC Media Player, 7zip, Pidgin, Process Explorer, uTorrent, TCPView, Foxit Reader, and WinDirStat.

Here's my list: OpenOffice, e-Sword, Firefox, Google Desktop, TightVNC, Thunderbird, Picasa, AVG Anti-Virus, GIMP, IrfanView, VLC Media Player, FileZilla, 7zip

Stupid lame filter nuked my <ul>

Use 7-zip instead.

Is there a comparison between TUGZip and 7-ZIP? (also see 7-zip.org)

Yes, LZMA is good, and more importantly it's free (would you really trust your data to some binary blob implementing a secret algorithm?). On Windows there's the excellent 7-zip (also free) and on Unix you can use LZMA Utils to get a gzip-style single file compressor, though it's still a bit developmental and it doesn't have gzip or bzip2's advantage of being well-known and installed everywhere.

However, the very best lossless compression, not mentioned in the article, is probably lrzip which combines LZMA compression with a pre-compression stage of shuffling around the data somehow (a bit technical I know, but bear with me). It likes to gobble memory but it tends to be either much smaller than bzip2, much faster than bzip2, or both.

I have not actually seen what is on their CD, but there are some examples of free programs, most of which, have already been mentioned, that are available for both Windows and Linux.

• Firefox Web browser
• Thunderbird full-featured email program
• GIMP Image Manipulation Program
• ImageMagick software suite for creating, editing, and composing bitmap images
• Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor
• ClamWin free antivirus scanner for Windows
• 7-Zip file archiver
• Celestia space simulater that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions
• OpenOffice office suite
• Scribus professional page layout program
• AbiWord word processing program
• Gnumeric spreadsheet
• LyX Document Processor
• Gaim multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client
• Audacity Sound Editor
• Blender the advanced 3D modeling program capable of producing high quality animations
• VLC - the cross-platform media player and streaming server
• Nvu complete Web Authoring System

• Openoffice.org (use word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, and similar applications)
• Picasa (view/edit photos)

Internet Tools

• FireFox (browse Web sites)
• Gaim (chat with users of AIM, YIM, MSN, IRC, etc.)
• Thunderbird (e-mail)
• Pegasus Mail (e-mail)
• Macromedia Flash Player (watch Flash animations within Web browser)
• Java Plugin (run Java applications inside Web browser)

Basic Tools

• 7Zip (compress/decompress files)
• EditPad Lite (edit text files)
• vim/gvim (edit text files--advanced)
• Adobe Acrobat Reader (view PDF files)
• PDF Creator (create PDF files)

Security Tools

• ZoneAlarm (firewall - detect unwanted Internet access)
• Avira Antivirus (detect/remove viruses)
• ADAware Personal SE (detect/remove spyware)
• SpyBot Search & Destroy (detect/remove spyware)
• HiJackThis (detect/remove spyware)
• Discombobulator (make Windows more secure)
• Shoot the Messenger (make Windows more secure)
• Unplug-n-pray (make Windows more secure)
• PGP (encrypt/decrypt files or e-mail for privacy) - see admin for more details

Advanced Tools

• Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP (mount ISO images as filesystems) from MSDN
• IMAPSize (manage/search/backup an IMAP mailbox)

That's why there's encryption software. Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't list much file encryption software.

However, most file compression software can encrypt. I think 7-Zip is a good one. Anyone know of better file encryption software?

Don't be a software pirate, stay legal and properly licensed by using the various free open source GPL licensed programs instead that are also available in Windows versions. Many of the best free GPL licensed open source programs which have been developed for Linux users have also been released in Windows versions. Not everyone is ready yet to move from Windows to a free GPL licensed alternative such as Ubuntu Linux. For them, a first step to freedom would be to keep on using a properly licensed copy of Windows, but to start using the various free GPL licensed alternatives to their various favorite programs. Someday, if they decide to move to a totally free operating system such as Linux they will then be able to use the Linux versions of those same programs. There is now an amazingly large complete alternative free software ecosystem of free GPL licenced software legally available for free to everyone.

Here are just a few examples of free (mostly GPL licensed) programs which are also available in Windows versions:

• OpenOffice the free office suite
• Mozilla Firefox web browser
• Thunderbird email program
• Clamwin free antivirus
• Gimp image mainpulation program for photo retouching and image composition
• ImageMagick software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images
• Inkscape open source scalable vector graphics editor
• PuTTY: A Free Telnet/SSH Client
• FTP client and server
• 7-Zip file archiver which can handle compression formats such as 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
• Scribus open source page layout application
• AbiWord the free word processing program
• Gnumeric the free spreadsheet program
• Stellarium free open source planetarium
• Celestia free space simulation and space exploration program

7zip is multi-thread/multi-core aware. Give it a shot http://www.7-zip.org/

If you want to compress in a non-proprietary format, use *.bzip2 format or *.gzip. There are two windows programs you can get:

For Gzip: http://www.gzip.org/

For BZip2: http://www.bzip.org/

This application below will compress into Bzip2 format is more user friendly, has a GUI and will split files for you:
http://www.7-zip.org/

Either one will give you compression that can be opened on ANY operating system including
Linux, Mac OS, windows, Unix.

here is a general reference page for MANY comrpession tools. Personally, I like the non-commercial ones myself. ;-)

http://datacompression.info/Zip.shtml

Hope this is useful for all..

There are some amazing compression programs out there, trouble is they tend to take a while and consume lots of memory. PAQ gives some impressive results, but the latest benchmark figures are regularly improving. Let's not forget that compression is not good unless it is integrated into a usable tool. 7-zip seems to be the new archiver on the block at the moment. A closely related, but different, set of tools are the archivers, of which there are lots with many older formats still not supported by open source tools

The excellent and GPL'ed 7-Zip can unpack RAR files. Is that better?

Please don't be elitest and only post 7-Zip.

I am the elitest! That's why I only use 7Zip!

Please learn how to spell, and where to download 7Zip.

Z-Zip format, compressed file format starting to get a foothold. not sure if there's an OS X decomp or not. http://www.7-zip.org/

You mean a PC that includes:

An office suite.

A standards compliant browswer

Maybe a simple image editor

And maybe a couple of small utility programs.

Yeah, I guess that would be worth paying for....
I mean, it's not like people are giving it away for free.

7-zip can unzip ISO's like a standard archive, no need to mount at all!
I think it's a new feature so you might need to grab a recent beta.