> WinRAR is much easier to use than 7-zip in my experience.

In what way?

The big icons make way more sense and more things have icons, the ".." line is more natural than the dedicated "dir up" button, the "create archive" dialog is more organized and its options more discoverable...

And when you run an executable from it, it (I think) unzips the whole archive, not just the file, so DLLs etc. can be loaded properly. Just saves some effort and thinking when you need it and doesn't make a difference when you don't

Never compared archivers at length, cannot speak as to the actual features. But 7z has this distinct unfinished open-source GUI tool look. That's all I remember about it. It may or may not be true that it has poor UX. But the aesthetics certainly do signal this. Personally, on Windows I used 360压缩 which seems to be a better looking winrar clone without nag screens. On Linux it's "atool -x" for extracting (there's no decent Linux file explorer, so the main selling point of archiver guis is moot too).

> there's no decent Linux file explorer

Dolphin, PCManFM, and MC would all like a word with you.

Also, 7Zip is no harder to use than the built-in Windows zip extractor if you use the context menu.

Thunar, will also want to have a say

> there's no decent Linux file explorer

There's Double Commander, which also works great on Windows and beats sibling-mentioned Dolphin and even PCManFM hands down.

There's also Ranger and nnn, if you need a CLI and don't want an orthodox file manager.

> there's no decent Linux file explorer

If this is true (and I wouldn't know because I haven't had a GUI file manager on my Linux desktop since the early 2000s), it's because GUI file managers are for casuals.

7zip is hard to learn because it's straight to the punch with no BS. Regular people don't like that stuff. They want nice visuals and receive cognitive dissonance for something they pay for.

Cognitive dissonance?? Do you see how full of yourself you are being? Other people like something different than what you like - deal with it!