Brief: Cannot extract .7z file in Linux? Learn how to install and use 7zip in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.
7Zip (properly written as 7-Zip) is an archive format hugely popular among Windows users. A 7Zip archive file usually ends in .7z extension. It’s mostly an open source software barring a few part of the code that deals with unRAR.
The 7Zip support is not enabled by default in most Linux distributions. If you try to extract it, you may see this error:
Could not open this file type
There is no command installed for 7-zip archive files. Do you want to search for a command to open this file?
Don’t worry, you can easily install 7zip in Ubuntu or other Linux distributions.
The one problem you’ll notice if you try to use the apt-get install command, you’ll see that there are no installation candidate that starts with 7zip. It’s because the 7Zip package in Linux is named p7zip., start with letter ‘p’ instead of the expected number ‘7’.
Let’s see how to install 7zip in Ubuntu and (possibly) other Linux distributions.
Install 7Zip in Ubuntu Linux
First thing you need is to install the p7zip package. You’ll find three 7zip packages in Ubuntu: p7zip, p7zip-full and p7zip-rar.
The difference between p7zip and p7zip-full is that p7zip is a lighter version providing support only for .7z while the full version provides support for more 7z compression algorithms (for audio files etc).
The p7zip-rar package provides support for RAR files along with 7z.
Installing p7zip-full should be sufficient in most cases but you may also install p7zip-rar for additional support for the rar file.
p7zip packages are in the universe repository in Ubuntu so make sure that you have enabled it using this command:
sudo add-apt-repository universe sudo apt update
Use the following command to install 7zip support in Ubuntu and Debian based distributions.
sudo apt install p7zip-full p7zip-rar
That’s good. Now you have 7zip archive support in your system.
Extract 7Zip archive file in Linux
With 7Zip installed, you can either use the GUI or the command line to extract 7zip files in Linux.
In GUI, you can extract a .7z file as you extract any other compressed file. You right click on the file and proceed to extract it.
In terminal, you can extract a .7z archive file using this command:
7z e file.7z
Compress a file in 7zip archive format in Linux
You can compress a file in 7zip archive format graphically. Simply right click on the file/directory, and select Compress. You should see several types of archive format options. Choose .7z for 7zip.
Alternatively, you can also use the command line. Here’s the command that you can use for this purpose:
7z a OutputFile files_to_compress
By default, the archived file will have .7z extension. You can compress the file in zip format by specifying the extension (.zip) of the output file.
Conclusion
That’s it. See, how easy it is to use 7zip in Linux. I hope you liked this quick tip. If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to let me know the comment sections.
how dumb one must be to rename package to contain some prefix, when everyone expects it’s gonna be “7zip-something”, duh…
I once 7ziped an entire ntfs-drive and saved it on a linux ext4 disk
When I needed the files, I got a error trying to expand the 7zip file from the Linux ext4 to a ntfs drive or to a dir on a Linux ext4 drive
I checked the internet and found a site explaining that 7zip had problems with directory structure, but zip worked fine
It is some years ago, and it is possible that 7zip on Linux has been corrected now.
It is also possible that the problem would not have occurred with a 7zip of a Linux ext4 disk
But I do not take any chances and continue with zip on Linux, even though I always used 7zip on windows ,even though I only use Linux and ext4 disks now
7zip is good but you can do more with peazip
Just wanted to thank you for all your excellent tutorials. I’m new to POP OS! coming from macOS and Windows. I’ve even got the GF using it now. Once again, thank you very much. I have been able to learn alot from you and are really enjoying the system, without losing functionality. Cheer :)
Thanks for the appreciation, Dan. I am glad you find It’s FOSS useful.
Hahaha, you know you’re doing sumting right when your Gf or wife starts using it!
I found that Ubuntu 18.04 came with .7z support out of the box already, when i use the Nautilus file manager. There is no application in the app drawer though. Thanks for article.
Yes but this article is still helpful if someone installs the minimal version of Ubuntu :)