Comment 31 for bug 389176

When I first started using Mac OS X many years ago, I was uncomfortable with the way that archives were handled. However, that discomfort did not last long. In OS X, double clicking on an archive causes it to be extracted to a folder of the same name as the archive, in the same directory as the archive. Creating an archive is as simple as right clicking a folder or group of files, and clicking Compress. Having used Windows, OS X, and Linux for many years, I can honestly say that the Mac way of working with archives is the most productive and quickest for me.

As a developer, I consider myself to be a fairly advanced computer user. That being said, I have NEVER found myself in a situation where I have left the need to manage the contents of an archive without actually extracting it. For most users, a program like FileRoller is overkill, and is better left as an optional install.

If Ubuntu provided a simple tool (like OS X's Archive Utility) that would extract the archive contents upon double clicking the archive, and a contextual menu item to create an archive out of a folder or group of files, this would cover 95% of common use cases. In order to perform more advanced tasks, such as to change the content of the archive, one would merely have to double click on it, perform the file management tasks, and then rearchive it. There are situations where this would not be an efficient method, such as for very large archives, but these situations are very unlikely to arise for the vast majority of users.

For more advanced tasks and more advanced users, FileRoller would still be available in the repositories, and could be added with just one invocation of apt-get.