It's the end of WinRAR! Windows 11 will have native support for RAR files

So far, the only compressed file format supported by Windows 11 it was the .zip, and this only became a natively usable format by the operating system (OS) most present in computers around the world, in 2000, with the ill-fated Windows ME. But, most likely, you only found out about it a year later, with the release of the far superior Windows XP, huh?

Finally! It's time to say goodbye to WinRAR! 

After decades without any updates in this regard, files .rar, . 7z, .tar, among a few other lesser-known formats. The great advantage of the format and its colleagues, among many, such as the best compression quality, which optimizes the space your files occupy, is the ease of separating them into several smaller pieces.

This is something that the only compression format supported by Windows, the .zip, it is needed, unless this is done manually, and then only in the case of folders with many different files, but not for single files. In other words, a tremendous headache that will be cured by this novelty that will soon be implemented.

These are advantages that .rar already offered for years, decades, but which made users dependent on installing programs like 7zip and more commonly, WinRAR, famous for offering a demo with all the features of the complete program, for 40 days, which in the end ended up being indefinite. All of us most likely have WinRAR installed on our machines, but finding someone who paid to activate the application is difficult. After all, there's no reason to pay for it.

And when will that be possible?

Through the The Verge, we learn that the Microsoft is working on implementing file support .rar and a few other formats to a trial version of Windows, but did not say whether or not it would be something exclusive to the program Windows Insider before being released to the general public of OS users.

Let it be said in passing that this support for .rar and his fellow kneaders megabytes is being made thanks to an open source project called libarchive, from Github. It is expected that the list of formats will match what is found on the independent developers' portal, and it seems that they will become the main responsible for compressed file formats on Windows.

Including this will also include the already supported .zip which, according to the team, will receive substantial improvements mainly in its efficiency of decreasing the size of compressed files in the format, one of its worst factors when compared to the .rar, in addition, of course, to the other types of files mentioned. There will also be an increase in the decompression speed of the native Windows tool, which when placed alongside third-party programs, ends up losing the race.

For some, it will be painful to let go of old customs.

Even when the update arrives that will support this .rar and others, it will still be possible to continue using programs like WinRAR or the 7zip, of course, after all, they have many features that have been improved over the last two decades of existence. So much time of improvement made them in fact much more flexible and convenient than Windows itself and many users must be well used to them in their work routines or general storage. Remembering that until the WinZip still exists, when it should have been extinct 20 years ago!

But let's be frank: it's always good to depend on as few external tools as possible, and if this support developed by the people of Github succeeds, an obstacle will be taken out of the way of many users of the Windows 11; not only those with knowledge of using .rar files, but also those less experienced, used to simply double-clicking on files in their day-to-day life. The convenience of having a single place to resolve tasks linked to this type of file is priceless!

Now, all that's missing is the update to say "bye-bye" and say "it was nice to meet you" when uninstalling WinRAR. It's going to be epic. 

For that and other tearful farewells to technological convenience, tune in to Showmetech!

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Source: Ars Technica, Github, The Verge

reviewed by Glaucon Vital in 24 / 5 / 23.