7-Zip 21.0 alpha introduces native Linux support

[mood]

7-Zip 21.0 alpha introduces native Linux support

 

Each year, the free archiver 7-Zip gets updated to a new version. The developer of the application has released two alpha previews of this year's 7-Zip 21 version. Reason enough to take a look at the new version of 7-Zip and the changes and improvements compared to the previous versions of the file archiver.

 

 

The latest alpha release is available on the 7-Zip project site. Just download the 32-bit, 64-bit or 64-bit ARM64 version of the program from the site and run the installer after the download.

 

One of the main changes, introduced in the second alpha release, 7-Zip 21.01, is that a command line version of 7-Zip for Linux has been released. The release is not included in the main packages for Windows; the download site lists two downloads for the command line version for Linux that are for 32-bit/64-bit and 64-bit ARM Linux devices.

 

A readme file is included that explains core functionality of the command line version. The Linux version includes all changes from the latest 7-Zip version for Windows.

 

The full changelog is relatively short. The first alpha version, released in January 2021, made internal code changes, fixed several unspecified bugs, and added Tajik and Uzbek localizations.

 

The latest release, 7-Zip 21.01 alpha, released on March 9, 2021, includes several improvements. Next to the Linux command line version, it is addressing a long-standing bug in 7-Zip that dates back to version 18.02.

 

Previous versions of 7-Zip had sometimes issue extracting ZIP archives with xz compression; this bug is fixed in the latest alpha release of 7-Zip and will find its way into the next stable release of the application as well.

 

Speed of the ARM64 version of 7-Zip has been improved in the release according to the release notes. Last but not least, several bugs were fixed that were not mentioned specifically.

 

The alpha version ran stable and without issues on the test system; most users may want to wait until the final version is released. Those on Linux may give the new command line version a go on the other hand.

 

Now You: which file archiver do you use? (via Deskmodder)

 

 

Source: 7-Zip 21.0 alpha introduces native Linux support

[mp68terr]

Under win, 7-zip and uniextract are the way to go.

Under linux, waiting for the gui version of 7-zip, even if the 'archive manager' is doing a great job already.

[aum]

7-Zip developer releases the first official Linux version

 

 

An official version of the popular 7-zip archiving program has been released for Linux for the first time.

Linux already had support for the 7-zip archive file format through a POSIX port called p7zip but it was maintained by a different developer.

 

As the p7zip developer has not maintained their project for 4-5 years, 7-Zip developer Igor Pavlov decided to create a new official Linux version based on the latest 7-Zip source code.

 

Pavlov has released 7-Zip for Linux in AMD64, ARM64, x86, and armhf versions, which users can download at the following links:

• 7-Zip for 64-bit Linux x86-64 (AMD64)
• 7-Zip for 64-bit Linux ARM64
• 7-Zip for 32-bit Linux x86
• 7-Zip for 32-bit Linux armhf

This first version of 7-Zip for Linux is released as a console application and has similar, but not identical, command-line arguments as p7zip.

7-Zip for Linux running on Ubuntu 18.04.2

While Pavlov has not released the source yet, he shared some information on how it has been compiled. As he self-admittedly does not work with Linux, he has requested other developers' advice on the best way to compile the program.

 

"These new 7-Zip binaries for Linux were linked (compiled) by GCC without -static switch. And compiled 32-bit executables (x86 and armhf) didn't work on some arm64 and amd64 systems, probably because of missing of some required .so files."

 

"Please write here, if you have some advices how to compile and link binaries that will work in most Linux systems," Pavlov stated on his release page.

 

Pavlov is also asking users to benchmark the 7-Zip for Linux's performance on various systems using the following command:

./7zz b "-mm=*" "-mmt=*" -bt > bench.txt

Users can then upload their bench.txt report as a comment on 7-Zip for Linux's release page to be reviewed for bugs and potential performance enhancements.

 

While this is great news for Linux users who prefer to use 7-Zip, a recent tweet by Google software engineer Christian Blichmann raises mysterious concerns about 7-zip's source code.

 

 

In a Twitter thread posted last night, Blichmann explains the reasoning for his prior tweet. TLDR: Nothing wrong with 7-zip but Blichmann had recommendations to make it more secure.

 

Update 3/12/21 with Blichmann reasoning for the comments.

 

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