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[Ozzie]

Originally Posted by The Fifth Horseman

There are three reasons against switching to 7-Zip.

First, the current code the site runs on only supports ZIP archives.
Second, the ZIP format is rght now the most widely supported one. Some OS'es have basic ZIP compression/decompression features integrated.
Third, a lot of users barely have any idea how to unpack a ZIP file, let alone anything more complex.

That also means we are NOT going to use any specialised form of compression such as ECM or PakkISO for games stored on the site itself. They may save some space, but are pain for any beginner users.

Saccade: 7-Zip is stable. Thing is, it uses a ton of memory to compress (for best results you'd need somewhere at least 2 GB of RAM).

First off, I truly like it that you're trying to keep the site noob friendly, no sarcasm.
Can't do anything about your first point, but does that also mean that you don't use RAR archives at all on Abandonia? Because if you would, it would speak against your third point.
The second is also true. What HTML 1.0 is for the web and BMP for pictures, that is ZIP for archives. These are the most simple, widely implemented standards. But they also aren't the most advanced, and you can only do basic stuff with it.

It's true that Windows supports ZIP out of the box, contrary to 7ZIP and RAR. On the other hand, I'm not sure how many use this function. From personal experience, I always install an unpacker when I stumble over an archive I need to unpack. And while WinZIP doesn't support 7ZIP, WinRAR does, and out of personal experience (again), I think it's the most widely used unpacking program.
About ECM: If you know how to burn an image or how to operate DosBox, then you should be able to execute a batch script. If not, then this nice file called "readme.txt" might help.
You don't offer noob friendly preconfigured games that come with DosBox and a special config file either, so I don't think it's too much to expect, at all.

Originally Posted by Saccade

Are you sure that it is everything and is stable?
I don't like using high levels of compression as it causes more checksum errors than it is worth.
If it is a single file limit, I prefer to split the archive into chunks and ensure it is more stable for others to burst open.

Yep, 7ZIP is perfectly stable, I use it all the time!
It's also very fast for unpacking, but quite memory hungry for compression, like The 5th Horseman said.
Personally, I couldn't care less about the server space and download traffic, but since, when using RAR or ZIP, the archive is bigger than the file size limit allows, I feel it's an unnecessary restriction. And except for the not implemented support, the rest of the arguments isn't very sound to me.
Sure, there will be people who will ask for help, but then, there will always be. Then we'll have to figure out how to give it to them, that's all.
It may be a trade-off, but I think it's worth it.
I expect disagreement, of course.

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@dosraider: The thread you linked to is nearly two years old! I'm new here, 7-ZIP improved a lot in the meantime, and things could change, you know. So, what do you expect?