[d33]

I worry that 7-Zip is going to lose relevance because lack of zstd support. zlib's performance is intolerable for large files and zlib-ng's SIMD implementation only helps here a bit. Which is a shame, because 7-Zip is a pretty amazing container format, especially with its encryption and file splitting capabilities.

[dikei]

I use ZSTD a ton in my programming work where efficiency matters.

But for sharing files with other people, ZIP is still king. Even 7z or RAR is niche. Everyone can open a ZIP file, and they don't really care if the file is a few MBs bigger.

[cesarb]

> Everyone can open a ZIP file, and they don't really care if the file is a few MBs bigger.

You can use ZSTD with ZIP files too! It's compression method 93 (see https://pkware.cachefly.net/webdocs/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT which is the official ZIP file specification).

Which reveals that "everyone can open a ZIP file" is a lie. Sure, everyone can open a ZIP file, as long as that file uses only a limited subset of the ZIP format features. Which is why formats which use ZIP as a base (Java JAR files, OpenDocument files, new Office files) standardize such a subset; but for general-purpose ZIP files, there's no such standard.

(I have encountered such ZIP files in the wild; "unzip" can't decompress them, though p7zip worked for these particular ZIP files.)

[notepad0x90]

I don't know about, had a dicey situation recently where powershell's compress-archive couldn't handle archives >4GB and had to use 7zip. it is more reliable and you can ship 7za.exe or create self-extracting archives (wish those were more of a thing outside of the windows world).

[sidewndr46]

What are you compressing with zstd? I had to do this recently and the "xz" utility still blows it away in terms of compression ratio. In terms of memory and CPU usage, zstd wins by a large margin. But in my case I only really cared about compression ratio

[jart]

Use the pigz command for parallel gzip. Mark Adler also has an example floating around somewhere about how to implement basically the same thing using Z_BLOCK.

[mrWiz]

My main use case for 7z is bypassing corporate filters that block ZIPs from being sent.

[psyclobe]

zip is such a shit standard, hell there are parts of it that are still undocumented and sharing documents between system zip implementations across mac and windows sometimes fails.

[Night_Thastus]

7-zip is the de-facto tool on Windows and has been for a long time. It's more than fast and compressed enough for 99% of peoples use cases.

It's not going anywhere anytime soon.

The more likely thing to eat into its relevance is now that Windows has built-in basic support for zipping/unzipping EDIT: other formats*, which relegates 7-zip to more niche uses.

[Bender]

7-zip is the de-facto tool on Windows and has been for a long time.

Agreed. The only thing I think it has been missing is PAR support. I think they should consider incorporating one of the par2cmdline forks and porting that code to Windows as well so that it has recovery options similar to WinRAR. It's not used by everyone but that should deprecate any use cases for WinRAR in my opinion.

[malfist]

Windows has had built in zip/unzip since vista. 7zip is far superior (and the install base proves that)

[anonnon]

7-zip, through its .7z format, also supports AES encryption. I'd argue it's probably the easiest way to encrypt individual file archives that you need to access on both Windows and Linux. I have a script I periodically run that makes an encrypted .7z archive of all of my projects, which I then upload for off-site backup. (On-site, I don't bother encrypting.)

[izzydata]

Is there something different about the built in zip context menu functionality now than before? I'm pretty sure you could convert something to a zip file since forever ago by right clicking any file.

[rf15]

Not that many people care about zstd; I would assume most 7-zip users care about the convenience of the gui.

[arp242]

It's been a long time since I used Windows, but back in the day I used 7-Zip exactly because it could open more or less $anything. That's also why we installed it on many customer computers.

On Linux bsdtar/libarchive gives a similar experience: "tar xf file" works on most things.

[KronisLV]

That's basically me! I really like 7-Zip because it opens most archive formats I have to work with and also the .7z format has pretty good compression for the stuff I want to store longer term.

[cm2187]

in fact this is the first time I even hear about it, and I am semi-IT litterate. The prevalence of a compression standard is about how ubiquitous it is. For that one, I would vote "not even on the radar yet".

[yapyap]

if by gui u mean the ability to right click a .zip file and unzip it just through the little window that pops up ur totally right. At least that + the unzipping progress bar is what I appreciate 7zip for

[snickerdoodle12]

That's why 7zip should support it. People care about the convenience of the GUI and we all benefit from better compression being accessible with a nice GUI.

[Beretta_Vexee]

I just hope that the recipient will be able to open the file without too much difficulty. I am willing to sacrifice a few megabytes if necessary.

[quickthrowman]

I use the right click context menu to run 7zip, why would you open a GUI?

[jorvi]

.. but 7-zip has a pretty terrible GUI?

Hence why PeaZip is so popular, and J-Zip used to be before it was stuffed with adware.

[Beretta_Vexee]

You are looking for 7-Zip Zstd: https://github.com/mcmilk/7-Zip-Zstd

I don't know what your use case is, but it seems to be quite a niche.

[zx2c4]

I was curious upon seeing this and found the thread where its inclusion was turned down: https://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/discussion/45797/thread/a...

[birksherty]

I use this one too. This is the best one out of all the alternative 7zip with zstd. UI is same, has all the options and faster than those for zstd in my comparisons.

[sammy2255]

https://github.com/mcmilk/7-Zip-zstd

[abhinavk]

https://github.com/M2Team/NanaZip

It includes the above patches as well as few QoL features.

[d33]

Thanks! Any ideas why it didn't get merged? Clearly 7-Zip has some development activity going on and so does this fork...

[m-schuetz]

Being a bit faster or efficient won't make most people switch. 7z offers great UX (convenient GUI and support for many formats) that keeps people around.

[rat9988]

If anything, the gui and ux is terrible compared to winrar.

[jccalhoun]

Since Windows 11 incorporated libarchive back in October 2023 there is less reason to use 7-zip on windows. I would be surprised if any of my friends even know what a zip file is let alone zstd.

[rs186]

If you ever try to extract an archive file of several gigabyte size with hundreds of thousands of files (I know, it's rare), the built-in one is as slow as a turtle compared to 7z.

[pjmlp]

As long as it does a better job than whatever Windows team packs into the OS, they're safe.

Even on latest Windows 11 takes minutes to do what 7-Zip does in seconds.

Goes to show how good all those leetcode interviews turn out.

[conkeisterdoor]

Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. WinZip is a slow and bloated abomination, especially compared to 7-Zip. The right-click menu context entry for 7-Zip is very convenient and runs lightning fast. WinZip can't compete at all.

[xxs]

There are lots of 7zip alike with zstd support (it's a plugin effectively). On [corporate] Windows NanaZip would be my choice as it's available in Windows store.

on anything else - either directly zstd or tar

[marcellus23]

Why are they not adopting ztsd?

[privatelypublic]

It already has- look up nanazip