Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't Use RAR

group.miletic.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 218 posts

Re: Don't Use RAR

#151

Post by xtracto »

account42 wrote: post #122
useFAR wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7z does not offer archive recovery. This has saved my archived data couple of times, which would be gone, if I was using 7z.

You can use an par2 file for that though. Yes, might be less convenient than having it built into the archive in some cases but on the other hand you can a) only download the .par2 file if you need it and b) use it to add error correction to files without putting them in an archive so you can access them directly and c) you can create the error correction information across multiple archives if you want.

This sounds sooo much like that "dropbox? Just use rsync" comment.

I don't think you'll get why having all in a simple to use solution is superior for several of us.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#152

Post by 300bps »

Someone1234 wrote: post #97
300bps wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I use RAR daily and I have no interest in using a tool made by companies who exist to collect data and use it to serve you ads. I’d rather pay $29 for a lifetime license than have any chance at giving more data about me to Google or Facebook.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. The major tool promoted in the article is 7Zip which is not made by either Google or Facebook, costs $0, and doesn't contain ads or collect data. The two tools which are made by Google or Facebook are command line utilities which also don't contain ads.

7zip is just one of three applications mentioned in the article and the article says it’s much slower and seems to more recommend offerings from Facebook and Google.

First off, 7-Zip achieves a better compression ratio, but it is much slower to compress than RAR. However, since 2013 Google's Brotli and since 2015 Facebook's Zstandard (Zstd) are two good options for file compression.

I didn’t say either of them contained ads. I said that both companies offering them exist to collect data and serve ads. I stand by that I have no interest in using any tool that they provide.

7zip is a fine application but as others have covered here it is not a full replacement for RAR.

So I’ll continue using RAR daily.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#153

Post by ronjouch »

xtracto wrote: post #146
noAnswer wrote: post #50

RAR is a full-blown backup format* while 7zip is "just" an archive format. So comparisons are somewhat mood. But even I as a RAR fan and license holder have to agree. For the average joe, sending email attachments, zip or 7z is enough. * It can safe all three file timestamps (From nanoseconds precision (with NTFS), down to only 2 seconds precision (if you want to shave of a view bytes)), ACLs, ADS, Hard and Soft Link…

RAR is the only archive/compression format that can include a PAR2 like recovery record. You can even configure what % of the size to dedicate for that. That has been a great killer feature for me over the years.

Confirming this, and confirming that the recovery record (that I had set to a hefty 10%, I think, because the data was important to me) did let me recover archives that suffered physical media damage, which would have been irrecoverable had I used something else. I wish 7zip had this feature.

This was one of the most satisfying progress bars: from "your data is dead" to a few minutes later "Successfully recovered full data from recovery record" :)))))

I anticipate passerbys might say "but you can do the same with TAR + xyz + abc". To this I’ll reply:

1. The nice thing about RAR is that this recovery feature has been built-in and extremely easy to use, since the 90s.

2. Usability nit aside, I'd love to hear about alternatives.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#154

Post by collegeburner »

mimsee wrote: post #125
kstenerud wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the winrar download page you can download the binaries directly without agreeing to any license, which means its clauses wouldn't apply. It's already been established in the courts that merely using a piece of software does not imply acceptance of licensing terms; the parties must actively agree to it. That's why so many companies push in-your-face agreements that you must actively click "I agree" to.

Could I then download a zip of torvalds/linux from github and use it without abiding by the license as it’s never thrown in my face?

This is why people start putting license in a big comment at the top of source files. Also why when I write sites I require the create user call to include a "acceptTosAndLicense" or similar field set to true.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#155

Post by useFAR »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #92
causi wrote: post #90

All things considered, there are no reasons left to use RAR. I sometimes run into RAR files that 7zip thinks are corrupt but WinRAR opens just fine. That by itself means I keep it installed. It doesn't hurt that the GUI is more pleasant.

I believe "us[ing] RAR" here means the creation of new RAR files. In fact your experience strikes me as another reason to actively avoid RAR; there is no guarantee that your RAR archive can be decompressed with third-party softwares other than WinRAR itself.

>>In fact your experience strikes me as another reason to actively avoid RAR;

This is only your reason.

>>there is no guarantee that your RAR archive can be decompressed with third-party softwares other than WinRAR itself.

I'm perfectly fine, that my personal files would not be opened by someone, who is actively avoiding RAR(in my personal use - after rar was lha, that I used for archiving, because no one else knew what was that). And if I am sending my files to someone, then they will sure know how to use RAR.

What others will do with THEIR PERSONAL FILES - does not concern me at all - and should not concern author of article, that heavily mixes public and personal use of archivers. If some of the points might be applicable to public use - perhaps, but it is questionable, that opinion of blog writer can have any authority on this matter, where everyone will be doing what is best for them, so the actual true value(where it is only worth to "prove" others how you are right and other are not) of this high opinionated article is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Don't Use RAR

#157

Post by jillesvangurp »

noAnswer wrote: post #50

RAR is a full-blown backup format* while 7zip is "just" an archive format. So comparisons are somewhat mood. But even I as a RAR fan and license holder have to agree. For the average joe, sending email attachments, zip or 7z is enough. * It can safe all three file timestamps (From nanoseconds precision (with NTFS), down to only 2 seconds precision (if you want to shave of a view bytes)), ACLs, ADS, Hard and Soft Link…

I think for the common use case of distributing giga bytes of data in a reasonably efficient way, 7zip is fine (e.g. simheaven.com uses that for huge scenery downloads). Where things get tricky is splitting the resulting archive in multiple files. This used to be common with rar and I think 7zip also supports this. That is convenient when downloading over a slow/unstable connection (or if you don't know how to resume an aborted download with wget or ftp). Less of an issue these days but of course browsers don't support this. With zip files this also used to be a thing that some tools supported. I'm old enough to remember PKZip being a new thing :-).

For as an actual backup format, tar is a common alternative. I'd probably use tar with bzip2, 7zip, or even gzip compression. It supports a few more compression algorithms of course. The main downside is that tar files are less common on windows and the whole double file extension thing confuses people with file managers that hide them (i.e. most users on windows or mac). Of course most of the archive/zip ui tools out there would support tar files anyway. Where it gets weird of course is with things like file permissions and other linux specific stuff like user and group ids. It's the reason zip is so popular, it doesn't support that at all. Tar is a bit over engineered for the simple use cases.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#158

Post by wink »

I have not used or even opened a .rar archive in probably 10 years. I am absolutely surprised about the amount of comments of people actively using it or even saying anything good about WinRAR. Wow. Disclaimer: I use Windows and Linux daily.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#159

Post by vetinari »

klez wrote: post #106
vetinari wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what's the difference compared to forcing docx/xlsx or psd? The network effects affect every exchange, not just archives.

docx/xslx are open formats. About psd, yes, that's proprietary. What government agency mandates its use for the public to interact with them? (genuinely asking, not being snarky)

> docx/xslx are open formats.

In theory, yes. In practice, you will see files in transitional schema in the wild and you need MS Office to work with them, unless they are not just a very basic document.

(I had a similar case in the past, the document contained forms, and it would not render properly even with MS Office for Mac available at the time).

> About psd, yes, that's proprietary. What government agency mandates its use for the public to interact with them? (genuinely asking, not being snarky)

Not aware of G2C, but in other scenarios, it happens.

In our country, public administration is not allowed to use rar either. Only zip, tar, gz, and tar.gz. Despite that, I did receive a rar once; also an Outlook .msg file. Rar was not really a problem, and .msg was solved by communicating with the other side (Mac Outlook cannot open them).

Re: Don't Use RAR

#160

Post by thiht »

300bps wrote: post #152
Someone1234 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. The major tool promoted in the article is 7Zip which is not made by either Google or Facebook, costs $0, and doesn't contain ads or collect data. The two tools which are made by Google or Facebook are command line utilities which also don't contain ads.

7zip is just one of three applications mentioned in the article and the article says it’s much slower and seems to more recommend offerings from Facebook and Google. First off, 7-Zip achieves a better compression ratio, but it is much slower to compress than RAR. However, since 2013 Google's Brotli and since 2015 Facebook's Zstandard (Zstd) are two good options for file compression. I didn’t say either of them contai…

zstd and brotli are not products though, they’re just components that have been open sourced (BSD/LGPL2, and MIT respectively). The fact they’re from Facebook/Google is irrelevant here. You do not support or endorse Facebook/Google because you use zstd/brotli.
Post reply on HN