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I can understand zip, 7z, and tar. But RAR? My only experience with RAR files comes from malware and warez (illegally distributed software, often compromised).
by hackerfactor1 3y ago
I can understand zip, 7z, and tar. But RAR? My only experience with RAR files comes from malware and warez (illegally distributed software, often compromised). Perhaps my own experience is just biased.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoYeah, that's why I hate shoes. Because people who commit crimes normally wear them.
- brianwawok 3y agoSame but fit me it’s socks OP: rar is very very common for anything made by a Linux computer.
- OskarS 3y agoWhat? In my experience, RAR is extremely un-Linux. It's not free software and not command-line friendly, and it seems mostly to be used by piracy weirdoes who need to split up files for uploading to newsgroups. If you're on Linux, you make .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 or something. Or .zip, I guess you see sometimes. But RAR? That's a windows people thing, in my experience.
- bandyaboot 3y agoAre you maybe thinking of tar?
- mikestew 3y agoI wouldn't know what to do with a RAR file on a Linux machine, and I've used Linux for over 20 years (and Unix before that? Don't even ask, youngster.) I mean, yeah, I'd figure it out; but I've not had the need. As sibling commenters said, you're probably thinking of .tar. Now that I run into a lot. :-)
- godshatter 3y agounrar x archive-name I probably installed it many years ago from the repositories. Now that linux gaming is so good I've been seeing 7z and rar being used for game mods a lot.
- hackerfactor1 3y agohttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-barefoot-bandit-colton-harris-moore-how-do-you-steal-a-plane-anyway/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-barefoot-bandit-colton-harr... and https://www.historylink.org/File/22562 https://www.historylink.org/File/22562 https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/barefoot-burglar-breaks-into-familys-home-while-they-are-asleep-police-say/RKAJ3T5YBZE6FLSP4DZRY2QT5Q/ https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/barefoot-burglar-breaks-int...
- badsectoracula 3y agoYou are most likely biased. I use RAR for most of my own larger archives, even on Linux (i use WinRAR via Wine - and yes i bought WinRAR some years ago :-P), mainly because its compression is much faster with comparable results to something like 7z/txz/etc. Though i rarely distribute stuff in RAR.
- ericpauley 3y agoWhy not Zstandard?
- MikusR 3y agoBuilt in recovery records
- mips_r4300i 3y agoI use rar for backups as well. Its superpower is recovery records. Reading bytes off a hard disk doesn't always work the same years later. I have seen corruption on hdds. Also use it to span backups across multiple archival M-Disc blurays. I also prefer the UI and configurable dictionary size to 7zip. Rar lets you isolate each file if you wish instead of solid compression. Ever had to insert 2 blurays just to get a 3kb text file out of an archive?
- badlucklottery 3y agoIt might be driven by transparency/security. Safely letting users easily see what's in a suspicious RAR before just blindly extracting it or opening it in third party software (possibly with known/unknown exploits) sounds like a good security feature for an OS.
- RajT88 3y agoRar used to be the option of choice when you had file upload size limits, then you could use multivolume. 7z does this now, so it is legacy stuff I come across I use RAR for. I am not aware of any advantage for RAR over 7z. I rarely have to use multivolume these days anyways.
- genpfault 3y ago> I am not aware of any advantage for RAR over 7z. In-file forward error correction[1]? [1]: https://www.win-rar.com/recovery-record.html https://www.win-rar.com/recovery-record.html
- alkonaut 3y agoSo long as it's just extraction that's cool. There will always be old data around and not having to install a third party app to extract it then I can't see a problem. Allowing extraction doesn't encourage anyone to create more rar archives. But yes, the only people who use it these days are the people who started using it long ago and just never switched.
- dist-epoch 3y ago> My only experience with RAR files comes from malware and warez Same thing could be said about .mkv (Matroska), which is also natively supported by Windows. I've never seen it used outside pirated movies.
- account42 3y agoYou have never seen a webm? That's (a limited profile of) Matroska.
- inversetelecine 3y agoRAR is great for long-term archiving without any additional tools. You can add recovery records, and even create recovery files (think parity / PAR files) all in one go.
- mcpackieh 3y agoIf you have many friends that are windows power users, there's a high chance they'll use rar if they ever have files to send you. This may be indicative of their cultural familiarity with the warez scene, but they use it for anything. I've received rars from people of their own music, photos, projects, etc.
- darklycan51 3y agoYes, people use .rar, get over it, an OS should not be designed around what a copyright holder wants, but what people need.
- kgeist 3y agoI guess it depends on your region. In Eastern Europe, RAR seems to be more popular than ZIP (that's why, I think, you mostly saw it on warez sites because they are often managed by East Europeans)
- yieldcrv 3y agoThey’re legitimizing the oppression following Eastern European border disputes /s /meta
- belltaco 3y agoA long time ago RAR offered the best compression(lowest archive size) in a free(*endless trial) tool compared to other formats. I think only bzip2 in Linux offered a similar level of compression.
- hypercube33 3y agoI was thinking about this when it was announced and I wonder if the motivation was somewhere else at Microsoft to scan these archives for malware on their cloud platform and someone just hacked the code to run on desktop windows or if it came along for the ride when Microsoft was intending Win11 to be an android killer for phones.
- yyyk 3y agoIt has a few minor advantages on Windows like ADS support or or recovery volumes or easier GUI.