Andrew Cunningham
Buried among Microsoft’s AI announcements and minor Windows 11 tweaks yesterday was a minor addition that solved a long-standing headache for Windows users. The operating system has finally surpassed support for .zip archives and will soon have the ability to work. You can use RAR, 7-zip, .tar and many other types of archives.
Built-in support for these various archive types is especially important for developers and users of the Windows Subsystem for Linux. In both instances, non-zipped archives are more commonly used.
microsoft told The Verge This feature will be added to an “ongoing” build “later this week”. May or may not be limited to Windows Insider Preview builds prior to general availability.
In 2000, Microsoft added native support for .zip files, the most common type of compressed archive then and now, to Windows Me, but it wasn’t until Windows XP in 2001 that most people encountered it. was. However, other types of archives required you to download and install separate apps such as: 7-zip Or WinRAR and its infinite “40-day” trial.
Support for Microsoft compressed files is Open source libarchive project, the list of file types that can be compressed and extracted probably matches the list on libarchive’s GitHub page. libarchive seems to handle zip files even on Windows. The company promised “improved performance of the archive function during compression” along with support for additional file formats. Unzipping large zip archives using Windows’ native tools has always taken a little longer than some third-party apps.
There is still room in the Windows world for apps like 7-Zip that support tons of file formats and have features like more flexible and customizable menu shortcuts.After all, WinZip is apparently there is stilleven though it’s been 20 years since Microsoft added native .zip support to Windows.
