Microsoft may have just killed WinRAR for good

History may record May 23, 2023 as the date WinRAR died. Showcasing upcoming developments in Windows 11, Microsoft has slipped into the corner From his wonderful summary Information that is far from trivial for a popular data compression program. And for good reason: we can do without it in the future.

Windows 11 will handle rar, 7-zip, gz and tar files

the reason ? Windows 11 now natively supports additional file formats intended for data compression. Among them is the RAR format, invented by computer scientist Eugene Roshal, who also had the good idea to develop custom compression and decompression programs. This is what gave WinRAR in 1995.

This ad could have been under the radar, as Microsoft’s ads centered on artificial intelligence. The software giant mentioned the imminent arrival of a personal assistant on Windows 11 (Copilot AI, based on Bing Chat, itself based on GPT-4). He also noted the improvement of Bing Chat in its free version for searching the web.

Native support in Windows 11 also extends to the tar, 7-zip, and gz formats, also prevalent on the web. Microsoft states that it has taken advantage of the open source project Liberchef to improve its operating system. Libarchive also supports pax, cpio, zip, xar and ar as wellhalf a dozen others.

The Windows 11 upgrade marks the end of WinRAR, but it is also likely to be the end of an era: the economic model of this program depends in principle on a paid license (30 euros, excluding VAT, for one user), but includes a 40-day trial period during which you can freely use the software.

In fact, this deadline wasn’t much of a problem for netizens, many of whom implemented schemes to circumvent it. When the expiration message appears, it is possible to bypass it and continue using the program. The net is also full of discussion threads and tutorial articles to avoid the WinRAR request.

These scams have also led to jokes about how WinRAR manages to keep its business going. 9gag is full of photo montages that make you wonder How society still lives in 2023I’No real consequences at the end of the 40 daysThe enthusiasm that must seize the difference When a user purchases a licenseAnd And so on and so on.

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