Windows 11 Quietly Updated with Support for RAR Archive File Format

[T0@st]

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?



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[vmarv]

Nobody ever paid for Winrar, nobody. Even the rarlab employees use a cracked copy.
That "Buy Winrar" button in their websites brings to the 7zip homepage.

 

[Chaitanya]

Finally, it was one last format for which a 3rd party tool was needed for most users.

 

[Vya Domus]

Even the rarlab employees use a cracked copy.

Why would you even need a cracked copy, it works without a license anyway.

 

[zo0lykas]

Why would you even need a cracked copy, it works without a license anyway.

"Just to make mad your boss"

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

Nobody ever paid for Winrar, nobody. Even the rarlab employees use a cracked copy.
That "Buy Winrar" button in their websites brings to the 7zip homepage.

I just tried that and it brought me to the landing page to purchase Winrar

Why would you even need a cracked copy, it works without a license anyway.

To be rid of annoying prompt

 

[vmarv]

I wonder why big companies like MS don't invest money in the development of a compression software like 7zip and winrar. These two softwares and winzip are like in a limbo since years. Yes, they get updates, but not ground-breaking ones. Lot of pro softwares nowadays make use of gpu acceleration and it's about time to see this technology used also in this field.
Winzip allows to use opencl to speedup things and I can tell that it's blazing fast when the program makes use of it. I mean, seconds instead of minutes to compress the same giant archive, compared to winrar and 7zip.
Unfortunally the program is a mess, full of crap. Every time you right click to a folder/file to compress it, it opens the main window of the program and there is no way to make it behave like the competitors. Also, to benefit from opencl, one has to use their .zipx format and (in my experience) this often lead to errors when opening them with winzip or other programs.
But a 7zip/winrar version with gpu acceleration would be a blast for me.

 

[Psychoholic]

Wow, ... .rar is a blast from the past, are they going to add .arj at some point, too
...may have just dated myself.

 

[CyberCT]

Hey Microsoft,

Instead of wasting resources on something trivial like this, why not bring back the option to disable Grouping on the taskbar, you know ... that thing EVERY other Windows version had, that allowed you to click right on the open file you wanted directly, without hovering for a second first. What'sd the point of the large taskbar then? Wasted space.

Uggg ... Windows 11 ... the OS with more clicks, less productivity. Just because they can.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Wow, ... .rar is a blast from the past, are they going to add .arj at some point, too
...may have just dated myself.

Nah, .ice is the next one coming.

Also, I still use winrar... Not often, but it happens.

 

[Marsil]

Wow, ... .rar is a blast from the past, are they going to add .arj at some point, too
...may have just dated myself.

yep you dated yourself, that's for sure!

 

[A Computer Guy]

Wow, ... .rar is a blast from the past, are they going to add .arj at some point, too
...may have just dated myself.

Is it bad that this trigging DOS 5.0 flashbacks for me?

 

[Marsil]

I bought a WinRAR v3.6 license in 2007 and it is still valid today used it with v6.21
WinRAR license seems to be a lifetime license

 

[Dragokar]

Nobody ever paid for Winrar, nobody. Even the rarlab employees use a cracked copy.
That "Buy Winrar" button in their websites brings to the 7zip homepage.

I bought a license and I use it frequently. I know in theory I just could click the tiny warning windows, but it is a great piece of software that deserved my money, unlike Microsoft e.g.

 

[slightlygrilled]

I wonder why big companies like MS don't invest money in the development of a compression software like 7zip and winrar. These two softwares and winzip are like in a limbo since years. Yes, they get updates, but not ground-breaking ones. Lot of pro softwares nowadays make use of gpu acceleration and it's about time to see this technology used also in this field.
Winzip allows to use opencl to speedup things and I can tell that it's blazing fast when the program makes use of it. I mean, seconds instead of minutes to compress the same giant archive, compared to winrar and 7zip.
Unfortunally the program is a mess, full of crap. Every time you right click to a folder/file to compress it, it opens the main window of the program and there is no way to make it behave like the competitors. Also, to benefit from opencl, one has to use their .zipx format and (in my experience) this often lead to errors when opening them with winzip or other programs.
But a 7zip/winrar version with gpu acceleration would be a blast for me.

There have been big advances in compression. The biggest one probably being zstandard from facebook, it's vastly faster than zip, winrar etc... (like 5-10 times on compression and decompression)
GitHub - facebook/zstd: Zstandard - Fast real-time compression algorithm

The problem is how do you open these files? The biggest thing zip has going for it is everyone knows what one is and can open it.

Even given an .7z file and it really reduces the amount of people that can interact with the file.

Also windows has had some horrible bug where unzipping zip is stupidly slow... really no excuse here...
Explorer Zip uncompress very slow · Issue #91 · microsoft/Windows-Dev-Performance · GitHub

 

[Cheeseball]

I believe they added support to decompress .rar archives, and that may not include split volumes (.part1.rar, .part2.rar, etc.). To create .RAR files you would still need WinRAR or RAR.

 

[Vayra86]

Ah the only reason I had 7 zip now gets eliminated... whenever I move to 11, which isn't anytime soon...

 

[vmarv]

There have been big advances in compression. The biggest one probably being zstandard from facebook, it's vastly faster than zip, winrar etc... (like 5-10 times on compression and decompression)
GitHub - facebook/zstd: Zstandard - Fast real-time compression algorithm
The problem is how do you open these files? The biggest thing zip has going for it is everyone knows what one is and can open it.
Even given an .7z file and it really reduces the amount of people that can interact with the file.
Also windows has had some horrible bug where unzipping zip is stupidly slow... really no excuse here...
Explorer Zip uncompress very slow · Issue #91 · microsoft/Windows-Dev-Performance · GitHub

For me the real innovation in this field would be the use of gpu acceleration, because would make things super fast. That way even archives with a high rate of compression would be created and extracted in reasonable times. Right now we have 30-40 different formats and only the developers of winzip thought to experiment with opencl support. The creator of 7zip was asked several times if it was possible to introduce this feature in 7zip, but, if I remember well, he thinks that this won't give much advantages.
I've installed peazip to try .zstandard: it's free and well done if anyone is interested.
.zstandard is fast, yes, with the default option 3, or with 5: the moment that you increase the level of compression it becomes slow like the others.
With this format you can compress one file only. When there are many files, the program needs to put these into a .tar archive and then compress this with .zstandard. So when you double click on the archive to see what's inside, peazip will open two windows, one after the other. But it's not a big deal.
The regular 7zip gives me errors extracting the .zst archive, while winrar doesn't.
Peazip can test the archive automatically after its creation, but doesn't seem to have the option to include recovery data in it. This function is missing also in 7zip. Winrar instead can do both things.
Also, peazip doesn't offer the option to create automatically .zst archives, but gives the "add to archive" option in the explorer menu and then opens the main program window: something that I don't like at all.

One thing that winrar does best and fast is the creation of cbr/cbz archives: the format used to pack the comics. For this you have to select the images and compress them in .zip, then change the final extension in cbr/cbz. 7zip and peazip can't do this, doesn't work. In winrar takes three seconds.

 

[Wirko]

I believe they added support to decompress .rar archives, and that may not include split volumes (.part1.rar, .part2.rar, etc.). To create .RAR files you would still need WinRAR or RAR.

The fact that the WinRAR software costs money obscures something more relevant: that the RAR format itself is proprietary. I don't know about the status of its legal protection, maybe there are patents, possibly just expired. Reverse engineering is not allowed. For Microsoft to include compression capability in Windows, they'd have to obtain a license from the owner, and apparently the owner is win.rar GmbH in Germany.

But based on what I've read here and at TechCrunch, I think MS did just that, so there will be compression too available in Windows. Not without nag screens, hah.

 

[Cheeseball]

The fact that the WinRAR software costs money obscures something more relevant: that the RAR format itself is proprietary. I don't know about the status of its legal protection, maybe there are patents, possibly just expired. Reverse engineering is not allowed. For Microsoft to include compression capability in Windows, they'd have to obtain a license from the owner, and apparently the owner is win.rar GmbH in Germany.

But based on what I've read here and at TechCrunch, I think MS did just that, so there will be compression too available in Windows. Not without nag screens, hah.

Yeah most likely MS paid for the license. win.rar GmbH just earned bank in one big swoop from years of people not actually buying WinRAR. Hahaha!

 

[R-T-B]

Nobody ever paid for Winrar, nobody. Even the rarlab employees use a cracked copy.
That "Buy Winrar" button in their websites brings to the 7zip homepage.

TIL I don't exist.

Btw, winrar supports rar version 5 type archives and... I really doubt MS does, because the library they based it on does not.

This means it probably can't open any of ghe latest rar archives made by winrar, with major compression benefits.

The fact that the WinRAR software costs money obscures something more relevant: that the RAR format itself is proprietary. I don't know about the status of its legal protection, maybe there are patents, possibly just expired. Reverse engineering is not allowed. For Microsoft to include compression capability in Windows, they'd have to obtain a license from the owner, and apparently the owner is win.rar GmbH in Germany.

But based on what I've read here and at TechCrunch, I think MS did just that, so there will be compression too available in Windows. Not without nag screens, hah.

There are open source and legal reverse engineered versions of the original bone standard rar format. This is what MS used.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

We've come full circle...

We've gone from NOT PAYING FOR WINRAR to REALLY NOT PAYING FOR WINRAR.

 

[matar]

7-Zip its free been using it for years and it supports everything.

 

[chrcoluk]

Wow, ... .rar is a blast from the past, are they going to add .arj at some point, too
...may have just dated myself.

Thinking same, rar is almost dead at this point.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I've been using 7Zip for years and see no reason to change what works in favor of microsoft's new less functional and less effective options.