File Roller — The Complete Guide: The GNOME Archive Manager on Linux
File Roller appears in many distributions under the name Archive Manager and is the archive tool of the GNOME desktop. On Ubuntu, Fedora and other GNOME-based distributions it comes preinstalled, so there is nothing to set up. Double-clicking an archive opens it in a window where you can browse folders before deciding what to extract.
File Roller
GNOME Project
The GNOME archive manager on Linux: create, view and extract ZIP, 7Z and TAR, and open RAR, ISO, DEB and RPM.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Archive creation — ZIP, 7Z, TAR with GZ, BZ2 or XZ, and JAR.
- Broad opening — RAR, ARJ, LZH, ISO and DEB and RPM packages.
- Browsing — view the contents and open a single file from the archive.
- Drag and drop — add files to an archive by dragging them in.
- Integration — compress and extract from the file manager menu.
Good to know
The interface is deliberately basic and has no advanced options such as choosing a codec. Formats depend on the tools installed on the system, so opening RAR or 7Z sometimes needs an extra package. The licence is GPL, free for commercial work as well.
Related tools
The KDE counterpart — Ark. The MATE fork — Engrampa. For full control over compression settings — PeaZip.
Ark
KDE
KDE’s archive manager for Linux: create, browse, preview and edit ZIP, 7Z and TAR, and open RAR, ISO and CAB.
Get it from the vendor
Engrampa
MATE Desktop
The MATE desktop’s archive manager on Linux, a fork of File Roller: create and extract ZIP, 7Z and TAR, and open RAR and ISO.
Get it from the vendor
Xarchiver
Ingo Brückl (originally Giuseppe Torelli)
Lightweight Linux archive manager independent of any desktop environment: ZIP, 7Z and TAR, plus RAR, ARJ, DEB and RPM.
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PeaZip
Giorgio Tani
Open, create and encrypt archives in 200+ formats, including splitting large model files.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
File Roller is the simple, familiar way to pack files on GNOME. For most engineers it is all they will ever need from an archiver on Linux.