 What is the best free and open source archive manager? This is a question that I've been asked before and like many things in the free and open source software world we have so many good pieces of free and open source software and You know, you sometimes you have to split hairs if you're talking about what's the best But for me when it comes to archive management, I think there is one program that stands head and shoulders above the rest And that program is PZip. So why does PZip stand out from the crowd? Well, let me switch over to my desktop here. And this is the website for PZip. This is PZip.github.io I'll link to the website in the show description But you can see there are many versions of PZip available and it is cross-platform meaning PZip works on Windows, Mac, Linux. There are portable Downloads for PZip. So if I go to PZip for Linux You can install it as a Dib with Qt5 or a Dib as GTK. So there's two different versions There's a Qt version and a GTK version depending on what you prefer and you can install it as a Dib or RPM There is these portable packages as well, which I believe are just targeezy archives that you make the executable Executable you can just run it without actually installing PZip. So that is nice And then you have alternative downloads and that includes a flat pack version as well And there's a Linux ARM version even now when it comes to features other than it being cross-platform Probably the most important feature for an archive manager is what formats does it support? Well PZip supports more than 200 compression formats So pretty much all of your standard compression formats including some rather esoteric niche formats so pretty much any Format you can think of PZip's got you covered. Now, let me go ahead and launch PZip I have PZip installed and this is the Qt version of PZip I have installed the GTK version in the past and I can tell you the Qt version and the GTK version look Almost exactly the same and of course they have the same functionality both the Qt tool kit and the GTK tool kit have You know the same widgets, you know, they can display, you know Essentially a file manager and have some buttons and some menus and and all of that So which one you install again, they're gonna have the exact same functionality So I would pick Qt Especially if you were using KDE Plasma or maybe the LX Qt desktop environment if you're on a GTK desktop environment Like GNOME for example I probably pick the GTK version just because it will integrate better with the theming for me I use tiling window managers and I install GTK programs and Qt programs So which one did I go with I just went with the Qt one because Because right now on Arch Linux PZip is available in the AUR But the Qt version and the GTK version are available in the Arch user repository one nice thing about PZip It really kind of looks and functions like a fully functional file manager So you have essentially a file manager here and you can actually do file management things other than Extracting and archiving files. You could actually if I right-click on something for example I have the right-click menu. It's kind of hard to see because I've got some transparency going on I should probably kill PyCom the compositor Let me escape out of this and do I kill all PyCom just to kill the transparency But if I right-click on this right-click menu file manager and then go into this sub menu This is some file management stuff basic stuff for example renaming files deleting files moving copying things like that So you can do all of your basic file management stuff inside PZip and of course you can view archives I have some seven zip archives here these files here that end in dot seven Z Those are of course using seven zip compression and you just you know click on it And it's you know, it's like looking at it and a standard file manager, right? So you can actually view the archive if I wanted to I could extract something I could actually just pick one file in the archive to extract if I go to the drop-down for extract I could of course extract everything in the archive That's what typically most people do but sometimes you just want to grab one item out of a archive So I could extract just the displayed objects or just the selected objects And that is a really nice feature of course other than extracting files Of course, you can compress files as well if I go back into this folder here I've got these files that are not compressed, but maybe I want to zip them all together or whatever compression format I want to do I select them I go to add and then I get this new window here with these two frames here And you can see the bottom frame. It gives me the output What am I outputting to the name of the file is going to be downloads dot zip By default it defaults to the name of the directory you're in and then you know, whatever Format that you default to dot zip it looks like in this case But of course I could change that if I click the three dots here It will open the file picker where I could pick a different location for the output And of course I could rename This here if I wanted to do I don't know test dot zip. Of course, I didn't spell test right I did tst dot zip but say that's what I wanted also I could change it from zip Maybe I wanted some of these other package formats So you've got a lot of your standard stuff including some really fast compression such as z standard So z compression which is kind of the new hot compression format that a lot of linux distributions these days I know arch linux is now using z compression for a lot of stuff. And of course I hit escape I just get completely out of that. That's actually not what I wanted to do So let me select those again go back to add go back to changing that This time I'm going to spell test dot zip correctly and I will leave it as a zip I'm going to save and one neat thing is you have some options here Including add each object to a separate archive. So if I take that on This is a really cool feature that not every archive manager has This is what they call batch archiving where it's going to take each individual file And it's going to separate those into a separate archive. And if I did this Just as an example here this will take just a second So it finished that if I go back to those files that I selected I selected all of these files But you will see there's also a corresponding archive to each one of those files Now did that save me any space not really because those were mp3 files Which were already kind of compressed files anyway. So zipping them really didn't do too much It saved a little space, but not much. So that batch archiving feature is kind of neat Again, that's something that you don't get in a lot of archive managers Also, you could do that batch archiving thing using the convert button So you have add which is compressing files typically you have extract Which is of course extracting from an archive, but you have this middle button convert And with that I could select. I don't know. I just select a few of these files I could go to convert and you see I get the same kind of thing here the same A frame here and if I wanted to once again, I could just split these up into a separate archive Typically you want that ticked off though usually you're trying to put everything Into just one compressed archive one of the other things you may want to play with When you're archiving is the speed. So we've got fast is the default It's just kind of the middle ground depending on how much compression you want I mean you could go with the ultra setting that's going to be a little slower, right So it just find your middle ground like I said by default it chooses fast But you can adjust that to your heart's content And another cool feature is you have this option here where you're saving Everything to a new archive by default, but you have some other options One of the neat ones is add if the archive exists or update if the archive exists So you already got the archive, you know, you got some other options You could play with in that drop down menu Now I'm going to escape out of that the one other thing I want to talk to you about is a Little bit of the user interface because you've got the menu system here at the top And then you've got this arrow this arrow that is pointing to the left What is that? Well that can toggle on and off the sidebar Now for me these are file manager bookmarks and I like having bookmarks in my file manager So I probably would just leave that on it's on by default And this here this gets rid of the toolbar the buttons here for your toolbar By default that is also turned on for me I don't necessarily need that Because all of those options are available in a right click menu So you can pretty much do everything there's key bindings and things as well So I don't necessarily need the toolbar The other thing is this minus sign or this dash and by default this is turned off But if you turn it on you have tabs so you could have multiple tabs open So if I hit the plus sign you know now I've got two tabs You know both of them are looking at the same folder But in this case I'll go to my home folder in this tab And now I'm in my downloads folder in this tab By right click I can choose close and that'll close the tab for me Not usually using tabs in my archive manager That's a nice feature but I'm typically probably just going to turn that off I'm rarely going to be tabbing here Now if you want to play with some of the theming there are some options here If you go into options here in the menu go to settings One cool thing that I have done I've played a little bit with the colors here So if I go to theme and color what I've done is by default the color I think was Just a really dark gray like 222222 whatever the hex value is I changed this to like a background color for some of my terminal color schemes Like the doom one color scheme and emax and alacrity So I've kind of set these colors this purple color this blue color these accent colors To be similar to what they are for example in my terminal Just for some consistency with the theming But you know you can play with some other options as well So that's a little bit of pzip Then of course there could be some integration with your file manager Depending on what file manager you're using If I go into my downloads folder here in pcman fm So if I select you know an archive here right click on it Pzip of course is an option if I click okay You know it should open that archive inside pzip If pzip of course is your default archive manager Then just hitting enter on it should also enter pzip Yeah and that works as well So there you have it now maybe not the sexiest answer pzip has been around for many many years But for me one of the best pieces of free and open source software on the planet Again cross-platform for windows mac and linux Now before I go I need to thank a few special people I need to thank the producers of this episode And of course I'm talking about the producers of the show Dustin Gabe James Matt Max and Michael Mitchell Paul West Alan Armoredragon Chuck Commander Gary Diyokai Dylan Greg Morse from Erion Hollisander Paul Peace Arch and Vador Polytech Realities for Less Red Profits Steven Tules-Devler and Willie these guys They're my high-steered patrons over on Patreon Without these guys this episode would not have been possible The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen All these names you're seeing on the screen right now Oh I hit the wrong button in OBS I meant to go to that screen No I hit the wrong button again That screen so all these fine ladies and gentlemen I really should re-record that I'm not going to but yes these guys These are all my supporters over on Patreon Because I don't have any corporate sponsors Who would sponsor me? I can't even operate OBS Right I depend on you guys Subscribe to DisroTube over on Patreon All right guys Peace