Can anyone eli5 what winrar offers that 7zip doesn't? I don't hate winrar but I failed to ever need it or prefer it instead of 7zip.
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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Not sure myself. Like many I used WinRAR back in the day, but it's been at least 15 years since I last installed it.
Winrar is older, so it has more sentimental users
Nanazip is a fork of 7-zip that is better on Windows 11. Doesn't answer your question. Just making you aware
Lmao
7-zip ❌️
七zip ✅️
Absolutely nothing, plus 7zip can be faster with better compression.
Well, apparently it can do some recovery of corrupted .rar, but who uses that format anyway
I've used .rar to backup some data to an unpowered drives, some time ago. You can reserve additional space for the checksums while compressing, so you won't be able to recover just regular .rar files.
but who uses that format anyway
Pirates.
A lot, sadly. I don't know why.
anyone who still distributes anything compressed with winrar, please just fucking stop
use it for your personal archival purposes if you must, but please just fucking stop using it to share or distribute anything publicly. there's zero reason to use .rar over 7z or zip or tgz or any other open standard
Hey outlook, can you save all 15 attachments to this folder? The 15 attachments I can view in outlook? The 15 attachments that drag and drop out of the email into a folder as expected? The 15 attachments that I can individually save as expected to a folder?
"best I can do is a zip file for the whole batch"
Because it is a web browser underneath
I hate no Outlook. Half the time when your drag n drop it fails to save.
Edit - clearly I mean new outlook. I would love no outlook.
Does it matter when 7zip handles rar anyways?
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7zip is better anyway I don't understand why people still use WinRar. Then again I don't understand why people still use Windows either.
Not everything is a competition. If people want to support WinRAR after the developer maintained it for more than 30 years and helped out millions of people, that's just fine.
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Name recognition counts for something in the choice about helper apps.
Sometimes venerable old utilities you know from back in the day are bought out and turned into malicious shit. I don’t discount that.
However when you go looking for a little helper app for something simple, there’s an ocean of weird little offerings out there and many of them are malware.
I’d rather roll the dice that a venerable old classic hasn’t been bought out. This fact is probably quite Google-able. As for the long list of other unzip utilities.. how am I supposed to know? Reviews and ratings are all fake. Many Reddit recommendations are fake.
Just saying this is one angle on why people might continue using really old tried and true programs.
I'm glad you can have a Windows-free existence.
Some things just don't function well on Linux, but there are lots of us who are 99% Linux and don't use Windows unless we have to.
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PeaZip best zip.
You wrote 7zip wrong
You accidentally typed ”7” instead on ”Nana”
I didn't, PeaZip does the same but is compatible with any OS.
Not japanese so I'll say with SiebenZip
Was expecting this to be an Onion article
We live in strange times
I own a valid WinRAR license!
The one true MVP!
Same. I've happily used it for over 2 decades and decided that they actually deserve some money for that. I've since switched to Linux, but don't regret paying for WinRAR at all.
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Pay for independently-developed software if you care about it continuing to exist. Steal from corporations all you want. But support independent devs (and small teams) to make sure they can keep maintaining the tools you love and rely on. It's the only way to not get swallowed by the big dogs.
I've never used WinRAR. I'm a 7-zip ~~fanatic~~ user.
ITT: The most politically charged discussion of compression software I've ever read...
That's how I know I'm home
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Shhh you're a free software
Unlike 7-Zip, which is actually free and also open-source as well
7-Zip is by far the best archiving software on Windows
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RAR files just make me "Huh?" as they are nowhere near as good as 7zip, as universal as zip, or as nice as tarballs.
The memory of multi-part rar files being a good way to get big things voer dial-up is kinda long past, they're a relic, in my book.
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