I haven’t used windows in about 15 years on my personal machines but see 7zip referenced everywhere…why is it so popular? Can windows 10/11 or whatever we’re on now not compress/extract most things itself or do people prefer it for some reason (nice interface etc)?
I’m always amazed when I’m following a tutorial written for windows and it says “download and install 7zip, then extract the file using 7zip”. I just right click the file and extract it…
Windows can do that, but opens archives as folders and will run executables by extracting them to a temp folder without dependencies. And the unpack dialogue is cumbersome, with 7zip you get a simple right click -> extract here / to folder dialogue, that somehow still is too much to ask of the main OS.
It’s likely for 'user friendliness’. Most people don’t even know what an archive is and that it should be extracted so a folder is much more intuitive and familiar to them.
I haven’t used windows in about 15 years on my personal machines but see 7zip referenced everywhere…why is it so popular? Can windows 10/11 or whatever we’re on now not compress/extract most things itself or do people prefer it for some reason (nice interface etc)?
I’m always amazed when I’m following a tutorial written for windows and it says “download and install 7zip, then extract the file using 7zip”. I just right click the file and extract it…
Windows only recently got support for 7z and RAR. For the several decades before that, it supported neither.
Recently? Feels like it’s been more than a decade now…I could be wrong though
You are wrong. Until recently Windows did not natively support 7z or unrar.
Looks like just 2 years ago. My bad!
Windows can do that, but opens archives as folders and will run executables by extracting them to a temp folder without dependencies. And the unpack dialogue is cumbersome, with 7zip you get a simple right click -> extract here / to folder dialogue, that somehow still is too much to ask of the main OS.
It’s likely for 'user friendliness’. Most people don’t even know what an archive is and that it should be extracted so a folder is much more intuitive and familiar to them.