Software update: PeaZip 8.1.0

Version 8.1 of PeaZip has been released. This archiving program is made available under an open source license, and downloads are available for Windows and Linux. The program aims to distinguish itself from the competition by specializing in safety. Encrypting data is therefore one of the main functions of the proprietary system pea format. PeaZip can create 7z, bz2, gz, paq/lpaq, pea, quad, tar, upx and zip files, and extract various file formats including ace, arj, cab, deb, iso, lha , rar and rpm. The following changes and improvements have been made in this release:

backend

• pea 1.02
  • Improved speed of hex preview function, updated secure delete function
• Zstd 1.50
  • (Windows) Tino Reichardt codecs for 7z v1.5.0r1
• updates codecs to Brotli 1.0.9, FLZMA2 1.0.1, Lizard 1.0, LZ4 1.9.3, LZ5 1.5, Zstandard 1.5.0
• (Linux) szcnick p7zip 17.04:
  • introduces support for Brotli, Lizard, LZ5
  • updates LZ4 1.9.3 and zstd 1.4.9
  • on Linux systems Brotli and Zstandard presets now points to single step compression in 7z using Brotli or Zstd compression (tar.br and tar.zst presets are still available as alternative)
• (Windows) added support for system’s Extrac32 as alternative CAB extraction engine
  • Extrac32 backend be enabled in Options > Settings, Advanced tab
  • CAB will be still listed/tested using 7z backend, Extrac32 (if enabled) will be used for for extraction operations

Code

• Various fixes
• Improved performances working with archives containing large number of items (files, folders)
  • on 64K items archive 50% speed increase, -25% RAM usage
  • on 128K items archive 2x speed increase, -25% RAM usage
  • on 256K items archive 4x speed increase, -35% RAM usage
  • improved speed for listing archives, also minor speed improvements for test, archive and extract operations involving a large number of files

File Manager

• Added new user-provided themes: KDE Breeze, Oxygen
• Improved browsing archives: clicking on root in breadcrumb bar now simply lists root content, while pressing refresh F5 re-opens the archive, fully re-parsing the content
• In case of spanned archive, the number of volumes actually found in current path (as required by PeaZip for extraction) is shown in application’s title bar and status bar
• Improved Settings
  • More flexible Browser optimization in General tab, Performances group
  • Reorganized various settings for better readability
• Updated translations

Extraction and archiving

• Added support (as container files) to .whl Python archives and .gem Ruby gem archives
• Added option to extract all, selected or displayed items to extraction dropdown menu, replicating Extract button context menu
• Added actions to Test all, selected or displayed items in Test button context menu
• Improved archive conversion procedure
  • Extraction stage is now shown as a single sequence of tasks, and main screen is hidden to reduce visual clutter
  • If errors are encountered in extraction stage it is reported to user, so conversion can be stopped (to correct errors) or continued if desired
• Improved extraction command line creation: when all items are selected switch to a more compact command line using filters rather than item’s list

Windows & Linux Installers

• Windows installer now supports command line parameter to set language during installation
  • language can be declared as last parameter, with or without “/” prefix
  • to identify the language please check the name of the language file in PeaZip\res\lang\ directory