rar file, what in hell do I do with it?

[the tree]

I recently downloaded psycle (http://sourceforge.net/projects/psycle/) because it looked cool.
It came in a .rar file which to the best of my understanding is something like a .zip file. Is there some brilliantly free software that will open it for me?

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

winrar has got a trial version if you only need it once you might wanna try that.
i dont remember if quickzip has rar support
im sure the free zipgenius does the job ->http://www.download.com/ZipGenius/3000-2250-10179818.html?part=dl-ZipGenius&subj=dl&tag=button

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

oh, and i forgot "extract now", also free -> http://www.download.com/ExtractNow/3000-2250_4-10228183.html?tag=lst-4-8

[Mausau2000]

RAR is like ZIP but better
WINRAR will extract and make them

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

indeed, but he asked for a free software ;)

[PeOfEo]

How is a rar better than a zip though? I never understood that. Zips have always done the job for me. Better support.

[felgall]

I thought Winzip could handle RAR files as well.

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

i dunno, but the reciprocal (?) is true, WinRAR can handle *.zip files

@peo, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rar
RAR compression operations are typically slower than compressing the same data with ZIP and other compression algorithms, but better compression is achieved in most cases.

[Mausau2000]

WINZIP can't WINRAR is the best

[Bluetagpizza]

I think RARs are designed to be crossplatform. I know they are very popular on Linux systems. I use PowerArchiver 2001 to unzip (should it be unRAR?). I don't remember where I got it, but a Google search should give you plenty of results (the 2001 version is freeware).

[Mausau2000]

I stay with winrar it is conpatable with every other

[Jeff Mott]

I know they are very popular on Linux systemsI believe that gzip is the most common on all Unix and Linux systems.

* Winzip can not compress or extract RAR archives
* RAR archives provide better compression than ZIP
* Winrar will compress and extract both ZIP and RAR archives

However, neither of these is the best tool. 7-Zip (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/) (a free and open source software product) has so far extracted every kind of archive I've ever encountered. It includes a new archive format: it's own 7z format, which is also open source and provides compression better even than RAR. You can choose between several kinds of archives to compress with: 7z (for best compression ratio), Zip (for easy compatibility with Windows) and Tar/Gzip/BZip2 (for easy compatibility with Unix/Linux).