Windows support for compression standards like RAR, tar and gz has been lacking. RAR, for example, was released in 1993, for example, while we ran Windows 3.1 with Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect for Windows.

Buried in a blog post by Windows chief Panos Panay discussing AI and cloud-based improvements to Windows in a blog post today “We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project, you now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows.”

As a sysadmin, I run into .tar.gz files frequently. Running a BBS means running into old files archived with .arc, .lzh, .7z, and other less common compression formats. The latter format gives me pause. As much as I’d like to see Windows functionality extended, 7-Zip has been a part of Windows builds for me since Windows 2000, and I’d hate to see their software become irrelevant.