7-Zip is a popular open-source archive utility built for Windows systems. Although there’s work in progress to bring it to Linux systems, that work isn’t fully done and the Linux version is still in Alpha. Countless utilities in the Linux environment do almost the same thing as 7-Zip. However, an official version of 7-Zip wasn’t available until quite recently, and only in console mode. If you need a GUI version of 7-Zip in Linux, you’ll want to use Wine to get it installed and this post is going to show you how to get that done. If you’re interested in checking the Alpha release of the Linux version, head over to its download page. On the download page, you’ll find two packages available for Linux systems: x86 processors and 64-bit ARM. 7-Zip main features:

High compression ratio in 7z format with LZMA and LZMA2 compression Supported formats: Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM Unpacking only: AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR, and Z. For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats Self-extracting capability for 7z format

To get started installing the 7-Zip GUI version built for Windows, follow the steps below:

Install Wine

As we mentioned above, WinSCP is a Windows application. It doesn’t support Linux systems, including Ubuntu. To install and use it in Ubuntu, you’ll need to install Wine. Wine allows users to run applications designed for Windows in a Linux environment. To install Wine, use the steps below: Before installing Wine, run the command below to enable the 32-bit architecture. After installing the package above, run the commands below to add the Wine package repository and key. Add the repository file by running the commands below. Now that the repository is added, run the commands below to install Wine. Wine should be installed and ready to use. You can begin installing applications designed for Windows with Wine environment.

Install 7-Zip

Now that Wine is installed, head over to the 7-Zip download page and get the Windows .exe version of your choice. For 32-it systems, download the 32-bit version. 64-bit systems should get the 64-bit version. Most downloaded content is saved in your Downloads folder. Open your terminal and browse to the Downloads folder and execute the installer. Replace the version number with the correct one you downloaded. That will launch the installation wizard. During the installation, when prompted to install Wine packages, choose to do so. After that, select the 7-Zip installation directory. The default is good. After a brief moment, 7-Zip should be installed and ready to use. To use it, go to the Overview dashboard and search for it. Open to launch. That’s it! Conclusion: This post showed you how to install 7-Zip on Ubuntu 20.04 | 18.04. If you find any error above, please use the comment form below to report.