From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-03-30T14:19:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Just for fun...

On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 01:51:27PM +0900, Kristoffer Lund??n wrote:
> On 3/30/07, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> wrote:
> >Is zip format really available with all OSes without extra software?
> >I'm pretty sure MS Windows requires one to install additional software
> >still, and I don't seem to recall zip being standard on all major Linux
> >distributions.  I haven't bothered to check whether it's available on
> >FreeBSD, mostly just because I haven't needed an unzipper in quite a
> >while.
> >
> 
> It works on XP, or at least it did a few years ago when I used it the
> last time, and as far as I've seen it works OOTB on any Linux/BSD/*nix
> distro that ships GNOME or KDE. To be honest, I don't know about OS/X,
> but I just assumed they handle this
> 
> >From this point on, it's all arguing what a "major" OS or distribution
> is. :) I'd personally draw the line at Windows, Mac, and the 3-6
> biggest Linuxes, but I know a lot of people would include a lot more,
> just as a lot of people would only include Windows.
> 
> I do think that I'm mostly right, though.

With the above in mind, yeah, you're probably "mostly right" at least.
I just got so used to installing a zip/unzip utility on MS Windows that
I always installed it as one of the first things I did with my own
systems whenever I had need of XP (increasingly rare now), and since I
tend to do minimal installs with Debian or FreeBSD (for instance), no
KDE, GNOME, or zip utilities need apply in my "default" installs.  I
guess the culprit in this case is the simple fact that I'm pretty
atypical, as computer users go.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"Real ugliness is not harsh-looking syntax, but having to
build programs out of the wrong concepts." - Paul Graham