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Unarchiver Provides LGPL RARv3 Extraction Tool
An anonymous reader writes "Free software to support the RARv3 archive format has been listed on the FSF's High Priority Projects list for some time now. We've always had ways to create and extract free archive formats, using tools like GNU tar and Info-ZIP. The RARv3 format is proprietary, so we don't want it to replace these tools, but it's not uncommon to see it used for distributing multimedia files over the Internet. That means the lack of free software to extract RARv3 files has been sorely felt. We're happy to share the news that there's now a free software project to fill this gap, and we can mark this item as done. The Unarchiver is a small collection of software written by Dag Ågren."
Why would you use a proprietary format to store openly distributed files?
Compressing my HD rip to save 5MB on a 50GB download!
In the case of movies, it's not so much that it saves space, it's more that it breaks the large file up into more manageable chunks and it also gives you checksums to know if something got corrupted.
This isn't particularly important for distribution methods like bittorrent which provides it's own checksums and doesn't have problems with files over 2 or 4 GB, but for some other distribution methods it does make a big difference, especially when you throw par2 files into the mix for correcting problems.
Finally there is a Richard Stallman approved way of extracting my pirated pornography, movies and TV shows on my Linux box.
Using a proprietary tool on an OSS system is so unethical...
RAR is pretty much the default foprmat on Usenet binary groups, for instance.
I'll put in a big thanks for The Unarchiver.
I deploy it as my standard unarchiving utility on all desktops I manage. It replaces the Mac OS X built-in BOMArchiveHelper which isn't as smart about handling extracting multiple files at once, and it handles a vast range of file formats that you'd otherwise have to resort to the command-line to deal with. News of it adding RARv3 is the icing on the cake - not that I've encountered a RARv3 file, but because now I don't need to worry if I do as my standard utility will deal with it.
Big double-thumbs up to Dag Ågren. Cheers.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
in unix, yes. in the windows world, there's only two levels of difficulty: drag-and-drop or impossible. most users have winzip or 7zip or whatever and pirates have traditionally favored rar. thus, the rar standard emerges and metastasizes so that programs like vlc support it natively. kind of silly, but it works.
if you want to cry, follow this link and count the number of shitty gui hacks that do nothing but "split" and "cat": http://www.google.com/search?q=split+file+windows
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
The problem with RAR files and Bittorrent is "scene snobbery". Basically, people reason that since all scene releases are released in RAR archives then all media distributed should be distributed as multi-file RAR archives. This can be seen on invite-only torrent sites that demand that all upload regardless of origin be split into multiple RAR files.
And should someone point out that it's really only when downloading files using FTP and other non-checksummed protocols that this is necessary then they will be screamed down by the know-nothings. And then there's the whole thing where they seem to insist on using 25 or 50 MB files instead of larger chunks. If you're grabbing files from an FTP/HTTP server dedicated to sharing these large media files chances are that the server is able to push the files to you faster than say, 10 Mbps, and we'll assume that's as fast as your connection is, that means you can grab a 250 MB file in approximately 3m30s if we assume no overhead, if we a assume you have a regular uncapped g.dmt ADSL connection (8/0.8 Mbps) with the typical EoATM and TCP overhead for your transfers then we're still talking less than five minutes for a 250 MB chunk. Contrast this with people splitting things into 5 or 10 MB chunks back when a lot of people were still on modem connections, a single 5 MB chunk would take more than ten minutes on a good day...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
multi-rar archives in torrents? Just thinking about that makes my blood boil.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The importance is that this is free as in freedom software. Ubuntu, gNewSense, and Debian can all legally ship this out of the box.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You can't repair corrupted/missing archives with md5/sha1. The .rar format is perfect for usenet, where missing parts is very common.
OK, it's no GPL, but still I'd say that it puts "open source" RAR support in a better position than other high priority GNU projects such as Flash support, where your only chance to have a good experience is to use binary-only code.
pirates have traditionally favored rar.
Your hearing may be faulty. Pirates have traditionally favored har and yarr!
On the 2 distros I've used most in the last 8 years (Mandriva and Opensuse) unrar is already included (in Mandriva from the PLF repo, in Opensuse from the non-oss repo). So what's the advantage of this new program?
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
Another nifty thing is that RAR actually supports Unix permissions in it's container. So it's pretty useful on *nix systems when you need to archive a large set of directories, maintaining various permissions (like 'executable').
As you pointed out with seeking, this is useful for when you want to extract specific compressed 'backup' data quickly. The fact it maintains Unix file permissions makes it a viable solution on *nix.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
the one time i tried a 7z only client
How long ago was this? When I switched to 7-Zip nearly four years ago, it already had the same sort of shell integration that WinRAR had.
if you want to cry, follow this link and count the number of shitty gui hacks that do nothing but "split" and "cat"
Oh lordy, if anything typifies the Windows ecosystem for me, this has to be it. I can't count how many posts I've seen on Usenet discussing where to find shiny software that essentially does nothing but "cat file.avi.* > file.avi". I'm sure that such a thing must be possible from the command line, but the majority of Windows users are afraid to venture there.