Opening .rar files

[Tim]

Wong Kwok-hon:
>> How about to compress to RAR ? Which software can ?

Kevin Kofler:
> Don't.
> 1. By using RAR, you help spreading a proprietary format which cannot
> be opened with Free Software. (All the decompressors I've seen are
> derived from the original non-Free unrar.)
> 2. You have to use a proprietary program to compress, too.
> 3. You even have to pay to use said compressor legally. 
> ...[snip]...

I agree, the original poster has already experienced annoyances at
having to do something to unpack yet another archive format, why subject
yet another person to the same thing?  The first time I had to deal with
a RAR file on Windows, it was a right pain.  It was even worse when I
had to deal with one on Linux, the first time around.

RAR's supposed to have some good features, particularly to do with
sending large files as a split set of archives, but I doubt that it's
going to be significantly better at it than other schemes.

-- 
(This box runs FC5, my others run FC4 & FC6, in case that's
 important to the thread.)

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