Official 7-Zip for Linux has been released

7-Zip is a free open source archiver that supports several archiving formats, including its own, which has better performance than other formats, and also supports almost all existing formats for decompression.

If you would like to know more about 7-Zip, then refer to the article “Free alternative to WinRAR”.

7-Zip was not officially released for Linux, but since the source code is open source, there is a program called p7zip, which is a console utility compiled from the 7-Zip source code. There are several graphical interfaces for this utility, such as q7z and j7z. Together, they allow you to get almost the same functionality on Linux as 7-Zip on Windows.

But it’s not that good. The p7zip version is stuck on 17.03 and has not been updated for a long time (at the time of writing, version 7-Zip is already 21.01). The graphical interfaces are also not updated frequently and are not free from bugs.

And finally, the official version of 7-Zip for Linux (console version) has been released. This is good news as Linux users will now get all the fresh features of 7-Zip. And, hopefully, the author will regularly release new versions along with updates to Windows versions.

For Linux, ARM architecture is also supported!

Official forum thread from the author: https://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/discussion/45797/thread/cec5e63147/

Links to archives with a compiled executable file:

• 7-Zip for 64-bit Linux x86-64 (AMD64): https://7-zip.org/a/7z2101-linux-x64.tar.xz
• 7-Zip for 64-bit Linux ARM64: https://7-zip.org/a/7z2101-linux-arm64.tar.xz
• 7-Zip for 32-bit Linux x86: https://7-zip.org/a/7z2101-linux-x86.tar.xz
• 7-Zip for 32-bit Linux armhf: https://7-zip.org/a/7z2101-linux-arm.tar.xz

Here's what the author himself writes about this issue:

It's first version of my port of 7-Zip to Linux. That port of 7-Zip is similar to p7zip, but it's not identical to p7zip. Also you can run the benchmark command to test that 7-Zip is working correctly. And it shows the performance of CPU:

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

Note that this benchmark command can work tens of minutes.

To install, download and unpack the archive:

wget https://7-zip.org/a/7z2101-linux-x64.tar.xz
tar -xf 7z2101-linux-x64.tar.xz
rm 7z*.tar.xz

The executable file name is 7zz:

./7zz

7zz Usage

Usage:

7zz <command> [...]  [...] [@listfile]

Options:

<Commands>
  a : Add files to archive
  b : Benchmark
  d : Delete files from archive
  e : Extract files from archive (without using directory names)
  h : Calculate hash values for files
  i : Show information about supported formats
  l : List contents of archive
  rn : Rename files in archive
  t : Test integrity of archive
  u : Update files to archive
  x : eXtract files with full paths

<Switches>
  -- : Stop switches and @listfile parsing
  -ai[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard} : Include archives
  -ax[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard} : eXclude archives
  -ao{a|s|t|u} : set Overwrite mode
  -an : disable archive_name field
  -bb[0-3] : set output log level
  -bd : disable progress indicator
  -bs{o|e|p}{0|1|2} : set output stream for output/error/progress line
  -bt : show execution time statistics
  -i[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard} : Include filenames
  -m{Parameters} : set compression Method
    -mmt[N] : set number of CPU threads
    -mx[N] : set compression level: -mx1 (fastest) ... -mx9 (ultra)
  -o{Directory} : set Output directory
  -p{Password} : set Password
  -r[-|0] : Recurse subdirectories
  -sa{a|e|s} : set Archive name mode
  -scc{UTF-8|WIN|DOS} : set charset for for console input/output
  -scs{UTF-8|UTF-16LE|UTF-16BE|WIN|DOS|{id}} : set charset for list files
  -scrc[CRC32|CRC64|SHA1|SHA256|*] : set hash function for x, e, h commands
  -sdel : delete files after compression
  -seml[.] : send archive by email
  -sfx[{name}] : Create SFX archive
  -si[{name}] : read data from stdin
  -slp : set Large Pages mode
  -slt : show technical information for l (List) command
  -snh : store hard links as links
  -snl : store symbolic links as links
  -sni : store NT security information
  -sns[-] : store NTFS alternate streams
  -so : write data to stdout
  -spd : disable wildcard matching for file names
  -spe : eliminate duplication of root folder for extract command
  -spf : use fully qualified file paths
  -ssc[-] : set sensitive case mode
  -sse : stop archive creating, if it can't open some input file
  -ssp : do not change Last Access Time of source files while archiving
  -ssw : compress shared files
  -stl : set archive timestamp from the most recently modified file
  -stm{HexMask} : set CPU thread affinity mask (hexadecimal number)
  -stx{Type} : exclude archive type
  -t{Type} : Set type of archive
  -u[-][p#][q#][r#][x#][y#][z#][!newArchiveName] : Update options
  -v{Size}[b|k|m|g] : Create volumes
  -w[{path}] : assign Work directory. Empty path means a temporary directory
  -x[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard} : eXclude filenames
  -y : assume Yes on all queries

Conclusion

So, most likely 7-Zip for Linux will be added to the official repositories. Perhaps this will also push the creation and updating of GUIs for 7-Zip on Linux.

Related materials:

• Free alternative to WinRAR
• How to open a Linux drive on Windows