[ros-dev] 7-zip - holy smokes!

[Michael B. Trausch]

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Thomas Weidenmueller wrote:
> 
> I don't think it's a good choice for our public downloads, the avarage
> user most likely will not know this format. zip still is THE standard.
> 

True, it is.  However, end-users will follow whatever trends are set for
them.  ZIP got to be big and well-known because of PKZip, honestly.

If 7-Zip is that much better, then I'd say we go for it and put in
something like red text above the link to the downloads page that we use
7-Zip.

Or, we could give users their option and offer both.  Those concerned
about bandwidth would use the 7-Zip version, and those who don't care
can go with the other one.

As far as users and .EXE files - End Users download EXE files all of the
time.  They don't know any better.  They see the box in MSIE and go,
"Yeah, whatever, it's my computer and I wanna download it," click it
away and move on.  *shrugs*

That's why I make money outside of my job, cleaning up after people's
idiotic mistakes, but that's another story altogether.  If we offer them
a self-extracting version and a 7-Zip'd version, that'd be even better
in terms of download time/bandwidth.

Not to mention, if 7-Zip can be distributed with ReactOS, it's a good
way to get it out there.  Since it's under LGPL, it'd be something that
could even be built into ReactOS in the same way as .ZIP format support
is built into more recent versions of Windows (and hopefully, just as
easy to disable, because I hate that feature, but plenty of people
absolutely love it).

Not only all of that, but since it's a superior compression scheme, it'd
be logical to support it and help further it's distribution so that
people would use it.  People don't just sit down very frequently and go,
"Hrm.  I think I am going to search out a new way to compress my files,"
because they figure that compression is compression is compression, and
that's all there is to it.

All in all, I think it'd be wise, especially over the long-term, to use
and support 7-Zip.

	- Mike

- --
Michael B. Trausch                               <fd0man at gmail.com>
Website: http://fd0man.chadeux.net/     Jabber: mtrausch at jabber.com
Phone: +1-(678)-522-7934              FAX (US Only): 1-866-806-4647
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