7-Zip is a tool used to create compressed files and to decompress them. It was created by Igor Pavlov in 1999 and has been developed ever since.
It is undoubtedly one of the best tools of its kind. The 7zip is distributed with an LGPL license and is free to be used by anyone.
The software can be downloaded from this link. It is currently in version 15.05 beta.
The main features are:
- Format 7z with a very high level of compression - uses the algorithms LZMA and LZMA2
- Support multiple formats:
- Compression / Decompression: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM
- Just decompression: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z.
- For ZIP / GZIP 7-Zip achieves 2 to 10% better compression rates than PkZIP / Winzip
- AES-256 strong encryption for the 7z and ZIP / GZIP
- Ability to create self-extracting files
- Integration with the Windows Shell
- Powerful File Manager
- Command line version
- Location for 87 languages
7-Zip runs on all versions of Windows. There is a command line version for Linux - the p7zip.
Useful links: