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 FlashZip — for the LinuxDoors AppImage Store
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 Name:          FlashZip
 Price:         $0.00
 Maker:         Stan Switaj
 Created:       September 7, 2026
 Kind:          A LinuxDoors AppImage Software Product
 File:          FlashZip.AppImage
 Size:          55M   (single file, download and run)
 SHA256:        474e03cfc905936f7c522435352f1961d4ef035be5bcbf06a95518cdb01f56ae

 CARD DESCRIPTION (the one line the store shows under the name)

     Open, extract and make archives — .7z, .zip, tarballs and more.


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 DESCRIPTION
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 An archive manager. Open a .7z, a .zip or a .tar.gz, look at what is inside,
 take things out, put things in, and make new ones.

 The archive is the window. Open one and its contents fill the view, with the
 folders inside it walked the way folders are walked anywhere else, and the
 things you do to an archive along the top where they can be found rather than
 hidden in a menu.

 Everything it needs travels with it. There is no separate archiver to install
 first, no package to add before .7z works, and nothing on the machine for it
 to disagree with — which is the point of shipping it as one file.

 Written for LinuxDoors, though nothing in it is specific to LinuxDoors — it
 runs on Debian and Ubuntu type systems, and on any other Linux distribution
 that can run an AppImage.


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 The formats it makes
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     .7z            the strongest of these, and the one to use for a backup
     .zip           the one every computer on earth can already open
     .tar.gz        the tarball everything on Linux understands
     .tar.bz2       smaller than gzip, slower to make
     .tar.xz        smaller still, slower again
     .tar.zst       nearly as small as xz and far quicker — a good default now
     .tar           no compression, for when the contents are already compressed
     .gz .bz2 .xz .zst        a single file, compressed on its own

 Compression runs from Store, which packs without compressing at all, to
 Ultra. An archive can be split into pieces of a chosen size — 100 MB, a CD, a
 DVD — for carrying somewhere that will not take one large file.

 The formats it opens as well

     .rar           opens and unpacks, including the newer RAR5 form
     .iso           disc images
     .cab .deb .rpm packages, unpacked like any other archive

 A .rar cannot be created here. The compression is proprietary and the only
 program that writes it belongs to the company that owns the format; it is not
 free software and is not included. Opening and unpacking one is a different
 matter and works out of the box.


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 Passwords
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 AES-256, on .7z and .zip.

 The file names can be encrypted too, and that matters more than it sounds. An
 encrypted archive whose file list is readable still tells anyone holding it
 that you keep tax_return_2026.pdf and a folder called divorce. Ticking "Hide
 the file names as well" puts the list inside the encryption, and the archive
 cannot be listed at all without the password.

 Nothing about a password is written down. It is held for as long as the
 archive is open and forgotten when it closes.


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 Being careful with your files
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 Three things it will not do, by design.

 IT WILL NOT WRITE OUTSIDE THE FOLDER YOU CHOSE.
     An archive can contain a member called ../../.ssh/authorized_keys, and
     both tar and zip will obey that unless somebody checks. This checks. Such
     an archive is refused with the offending name shown, and nothing is
     written at all.

 IT WILL NOT REPLACE SOMETHING WITHOUT ASKING.
     Making an archive over one that already exists asks first. Extracting
     tells you where things are going before they go.

 IT WILL NOT LEAVE HALF AN ARCHIVE BEHIND.
     Removing files from a compressed archive means writing it again, because
     no compressed format can cut a piece out of the middle. That rewrite goes
     to a temporary file beside the original and is moved into place only when
     it has finished — so an interrupted delete cannot leave half an archive
     where a backup used to be.


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 What is in the program
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 THE LIST
     Name, size, packed size, ratio, date and checksum for everything in the
     archive, sorted by any column. Folders inside the archive open like
     folders. A padlock marks anything encrypted.

     Walking a large archive and taking one file out of it is the ordinary
     case, not a special one: open the folders down to what you want, select
     it, press Extract, and only that file is written. Nothing else is
     unpacked along the way — one file out of a seventy-file archive takes
     about four milliseconds.

     One detail worth explaining: in a solid archive the files are compressed
     as a single stream, so there is no such thing as the packed size of one
     file in it. Those rows say "solid" rather than pinning the whole block's
     size on whichever file happened to carry the figure — which is where a
     six-byte note ends up described as 195 KB at a ratio of 33,000%.

 ADD AND REMOVE
     Put more files into an archive that already exists, or take files out of
     one, without rebuilding it by hand.

 TEST
     Read every byte back out and confirm nothing is damaged, before you find
     out the hard way that the backup was no good.

 INFORMATION
     What the archive is, how many files, how much it saved, whether it is
     encrypted.

 IT KEEPS WORKING WHILE IT WORKS
     Long jobs run in the background with a progress bar and a Stop, so the
     window never freezes, and stopping stops between files rather than
     part-way through writing one.

 LIGHT AND DARK
     Both, switched with one key, with every colour pair in both themes
     measured against the WCAG contrast standard rather than judged by eye.


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 On the command line
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 The same program, without a window, so it is as useful in a script as it is
 on a desktop. The work is done by the same code the buttons use, including
 the refusal to write outside the chosen folder.

     FlashZip.AppImage -l backup.7z                 list what is inside
     FlashZip.AppImage -x backup.7z -o ~/restore    extract all of it
     FlashZip.AppImage -x backup.7z docs/notes.txt -o ~/here
                                                    just that one file
     FlashZip.AppImage -x backup.7z photos -o ~/here
                                                    just that one folder
     FlashZip.AppImage -t backup.7z                 check it is not damaged
     FlashZip.AppImage -a new.tar.xz docs/ notes.txt --level 9
     FlashZip.AppImage -x secret.7z -p 'the password'
     FlashZip.AppImage --formats                    what this machine can do

 It reports properly: 0 when it worked, 1 when the archive was the problem,
 2 when the command was, and 3 when a password is needed or wrong — so a
 script can tell the difference without reading the text.


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 LinuxDoors original
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 Built by LinuxDoors — this is our own application, not a mirror and not a
 repackaging of somebody else's build. The SHA-256 above is authoritative.

 It carries its own Python, its own Qt, and its own compression engine, so
 every format above works on a computer with nothing installed on it. The zip
 and tarball families are handled inside the program itself, which is why
 progress is counted file by file and Stop stops when you press it.


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 Running it — nothing to install
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     chmod +x FlashZip.AppImage
     ./FlashZip.AppImage

 Or give it an archive to open:

     ./FlashZip.AppImage backup.7z

 On LinuxDoors, which has no FUSE, run it the way LinuxDoors runs any AppImage:

     ./FlashZip.AppImage --appimage-extract-and-run

 or through linuxdoors-run-appimage, which does that for you and unpacks it
 once rather than on every launch.

 Settings live in ~/.config/FlashZip/FlashZip.save and are written when the
 program closes. Deleting that file puts everything back as it started.
