Thursday, May 25th 2023
Windows 11 Quietly Updated with Support for RAR Archive File Format
Microsoft has been hyping up a new implementation of AI assistance into its flagship operating system - Windows 11 - this week, but a keen-eyed journalist has noticed an interesting tidbit placed in plain sight amongst all of the artificial intelligence bluster. Those who have legitimately purchased the WinRAR archiver extractor tool within the past few days should look away now. Within the announcement of a Windows 11 Co-Pilot, under the section named "Reducing toil and unlocking the fun and joy of development on Windows with new features and improvements," Panos Panay (the chief product officer) mentions an unexpected addition: "We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project. You now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows."
It is slightly amusing that it has taken Microsoft's engineers almost three decades to add native support for RAR files in their OS product environment - it should be noted that Windows 10 is not getting this exclusive treatment, after all the company's product managers are encouraging folks to get onto 11 to enjoy all of the latest fun features. It is perhaps not great news for the developer of this archive file format - RARLAB proclaims on their site: "With over 500 million users worldwide, WinRAR is the world's most popular compression tool! There is no better way to compress files for efficient and secure file transfer. Providing fast email transmission and well-organized data storage options, WinRAR also offers solutions for users working in all industries and sectors." Windows users have often joked about getting the most out of time-limited shareware versions of the WinRAR suite, but not many have actually purchased it - will the small update to Windows 11 impact RARLAB's sales figures in the immediate future?
Source:
Tech Crunch
It is slightly amusing that it has taken Microsoft's engineers almost three decades to add native support for RAR files in their OS product environment - it should be noted that Windows 10 is not getting this exclusive treatment, after all the company's product managers are encouraging folks to get onto 11 to enjoy all of the latest fun features. It is perhaps not great news for the developer of this archive file format - RARLAB proclaims on their site: "With over 500 million users worldwide, WinRAR is the world's most popular compression tool! There is no better way to compress files for efficient and secure file transfer. Providing fast email transmission and well-organized data storage options, WinRAR also offers solutions for users working in all industries and sectors." Windows users have often joked about getting the most out of time-limited shareware versions of the WinRAR suite, but not many have actually purchased it - will the small update to Windows 11 impact RARLAB's sales figures in the immediate future?
35 Comments on Windows 11 Quietly Updated with Support for RAR Archive File Format
sysadmin/comments/13rfziq
The TechCrunch article was pretty good, though. Reminiscing on simpler times. WinRAR and AIDA64 are both softwares I should probably pick up a legitimate license of sometime, as a token of gratitude over all the years they've been around. AIDA especially. Wish they released a benchmarking-focused version (offering hardware info, sensor data, and the benchmarks, doing away with the rest) of it with a perpetual license, though.
And it was free ~
www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Everest-Home-Edition.shtml
I was referring to the utility, not the format. While I use the 7Zip utility I rarely use the 7Zip container format. Yes, irony..It's in the insiders program ISO releases. It's been present for a little bit. NOT a welcome type of functionality IMO.
Though it's not talked about in this build, it does seem to be included and the functionality to unpack RAR and other less common container file types is present. It works the same way Windows handles normal contain files, which is VERY clunky and cumbersome, thus my original comment.
If the system can't match the performance of the programs that were used to create these archives, then having a built-in function to extract them its useful only for the peope who use the device just to write and browse the internet, and once in a while have to open a small .rar archive. Just like IE, nobody nowadays use it. A regular pc user will install a program that can do that better.