7-Zip 21.0 alpha introduces native Linux support

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 11, 2021
Linux, Software
|
18

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.

7-zip 21.01

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)

Summary
7-Zip 21.0 alpha introduces native Linux support
Article Name
7-Zip 21.0 alpha introduces native Linux support
Description
The latest alpha release of the free file archiver 7-Zip introduced support for running the program on the Linux command line-
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. BM said on August 7, 2021 at 1:08 am
    Reply

    A little off topic, but for anyone like me, who searches through comments in old posts to find related info (as I did in researching alternatives for high compression archives), I am posting this…

    I’ve tried PeaZip and 7Zip, each with > 1TB of files (ranging from 500MB to 50GB).

    Many comparisons said that PeaZip was the winner in terms of the amount of space savings, so I thought I’d give it a try.

    I’ve been a long time 7Zip user, but with about 7TB total in files to archive, the kind of difference promised could be up to a further 500GB+ over 7Zip archives.

    My experience on Windows…

    Batching:

    I was “easily” able to set up BAT files for 7Zip to run against either individual files or folders.

    PeaZip was so poorly documented (and few third party resources / blogs on it) so gave up trying to figure out – just ran manually.

    Compression time:

    PeaZip took forrrrrreeeeevvvvveeeeerrrr to compress on max compression settings (ZPAQ ultra) and would sometimes “hang”.

    7Zip max compress (LZMA2) was a fraction of the time.

    Both used the max number of CPUs I could define – tried to make it as “apples to apples” as possible in the other settings as well (PeaZip documentation was light on this).

    Compression results:

    80%+ of the time the 7Zip files were slightly smaller than the PeaZip.

    Archive Interface:

    7Zip was much “friendlier”, as it displays the files within the directory folder hierarchy they originated in.

    PeaZip lists files and folders independently – no organization (unclear from documentation if this is changable).

    Extracting/DeCompressing:

    Both seem to take the same time to extract the entire archive.

    HOWEVER, two problems run into with PeaZip on the odd archive:
    1) Some required a password (none were used in creating the archive though!!);
    2) Some just wouldn’t complete an extract – there would be some kind of error. Fortunately, I could access the originals still from elsewhere.

    7Zip was ROCK SOLID on every single archive – no surprise issues like this.

    I have since converted all the PeaZip to 7Zip.

    Hopes this helps a future somebody who is checking out PeaZip vs 7Zip.

  2. bobpaul said on March 12, 2021 at 3:34 pm
    Reply

    It’s a real shame the 7zip format can’t store permission information. This would be really useful on both Windows and POSIX systems and would allow 7zip to replace the TAR format.

    1. Bob said on April 6, 2021 at 7:47 am
      Reply

      There is a lzma archiver that knows of permissions: LRZIP

  3. Dave said on March 12, 2021 at 1:36 pm
    Reply

    Latest p7zip commit was 3/6/2021:

    https://github.com/jinfeihan57/p7zip/commits/master

  4. Allwynd said on March 12, 2021 at 8:42 am
    Reply

    It’s beyond me why they would not release a GUI version of the program for Linux. It’s not like everyone using Linux wants to use a command line.

    1. Kirin said on March 15, 2021 at 12:43 am
      Reply

      Give me a break. It’s one guy doing it all for you. For free. And still you leeches will never be satisfied.

    2. patience said on March 12, 2021 at 6:38 pm
      Reply

      have patience…they might add a gui in the future? who knows…

    3. bobpaul said on March 12, 2021 at 3:42 pm
      Reply

      Meh. There are a million GUI archivers for linux that support whatever archive formats you have commandline tools for. I already use “file-roller” for 7zip files on Linux. I can understand why he wouldn’t want to maintain multiple different GUI applications (one for Win32, one for Xorg+GTK or QT, maybe 1 for Mac.

      He might consider porting his Windows GUI app to .Net Core, as then it would run easily on Mac and Linux as well. But part of what makes the 7zip application nice on Windows is its context menu integration in Windows explorer, and that’s still going to be specific to the file manager (so he’d have to have special code for Mac OS Finder, for Thunar on Linux, for Nautilus on Gnome, for Dolphin on KDE, etc, etc). That’s a lot of effort for something the community has already solved with open source GUIs.

  5. Dr. Leo said on March 12, 2021 at 2:15 am
    Reply

    I’m confused. You say it’s getting command line support, but you show a picture of a GUI.

    Why, exactly? What OS are you running that GUI in? I see nothing about a GUI being added for Linux, which it desperately needs.

    Thankfully, PeaZip, which should be in more Linux repositories but isn’t, has Linux versions available on their site for download. PeaZip is an archiver with a very nice looking GUI.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on March 12, 2021 at 1:12 pm
      Reply

      The picture is from the Windows GUI version.

    2. Anonymous said on March 12, 2021 at 10:20 am
      Reply

      I am also confused about the GUI. Judging from the image I would say it is a screenshot from Windows, which has nothing to do with linux.

    3. patience said on March 12, 2021 at 8:19 am
      Reply

      that obviously windows lol…by the way peazip use p7zip(outdated fork of 7-zip) so this news is super welcomed.

  6. joe said on March 11, 2021 at 8:49 pm
    Reply

    Great news! Thanks!
    Have Ubuntu Linux 20.04 64 bits.

    Qs:
    – How to install it?.
    – How can I open
    my old, important .7z files
    from my Dolphin File Mgr?…
    – Lastly, should I wait to install it,
    after it get out of Alpha/Beta stages?…

    Any advice is highly appreciated.

    1. ULBoom said on April 4, 2021 at 5:28 pm
      Reply

      I agree with patience.
      Wait for it to appear in whatever repos you use.

      Yeah, you’ll like it, it’s fast and deals with many file types. Although for simple archiving and opening, Linux distros have good built in utilities and there are a bazillion alternatives.

    2. patience said on March 12, 2021 at 8:11 am
      Reply

      i would wait stable…especially when working with important file.

  7. nitro322 said on March 11, 2021 at 4:06 pm
    Reply

    This is welcome news. I’ve long relied on p7zip, a port of 7zip to POSIX platforms, but while that port has performed admirably it seems to be abandoned now, with the last release in 2016. Native Linux support from 7-zip itself will be wonderful.

  8. Carlos said on March 11, 2021 at 2:38 pm
    Reply

    But tar and ghostscript are not app file containers? Why another zip app snapshot on linux distro?

  9. ryuk said on March 11, 2021 at 12:01 pm
    Reply

    Go Linux! :)

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