this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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So, a long time ago, I tried using 7zip for extracting a zip file or similar. I don't think it was a RAR file at the very least. I noticed that 7zip was slower than WinRAR, which is what I had always used since it was the first I'd heard of a program that could unzip files.
Fast forward a few years, I had some money and bought a WinRAR license, just because I liked the program that much.
Fast forward a few more years, and I use Nanazip on Windows and Ark on KDE/Fedora.
I will always remember the book stack icon for zips/RARs/etc. fondly and just how much faster (again way way back in the day). Multipart RARs were how I got a lot of stuff back in the day, even larger mods!
Anyway, I know it is popular to hate on WinRAR, but for me, it will always be remembered fondly for what it was. :,-)
Afaik (and I may be wrong), RAR is a proprietary format created by the guy who made winrar. Because of it, the compression/decompression libraries are licensed, and cannot be freely written. However, in order for the format to catch on, the developer released a freeware (free as in beer, not as in freedom) decompression library. That way, anyone can easily incorporate decompression code in their software, and thus, anyone can decompress a rar.
However, the code isn't free to rewrite, so rar decompressors (at least those that don't make a deal and pay money to winrar) are stuck with the same implementation of the rar decompressor. If that freeware code is slower than what winrar uses, winrar will always be faster.
Imho that's a bit anti-competitive, and is what has kept me from ever using the RAR format. Especially now that we have way better formats (both in compression and features), like 7z.
I'll be honest with you, I never cared about any of that stuff when I was younger, so it wouldn't have made much of a difference to me back then.
As I said, the zipped file was not a RAR file, but this was almost 20 years ago, so that is a bit fuzzy. 7zip was much slower for the file that I unzipped, that much I do know! I still remember seeing a progress bar on 7zip, which I had never seen before on WinRAR (unless it was one of those multipart files, which was rare even then for me!). That is what stood out to me and why I can remember it so well. I even remember asking myself, "Why do people prefer 7zip if it is slower?"!
I will say these days I don't use WinRAR, and just stick with Nanazip and Ark! I care more about stuff like that now though, so I appreciate you giving me more context! :-)