[ale] rar file, can anything read it on Linux?

[mmillson at meritonlinesystems.com (Mike Millson)]

On Wed, 2006-04-12 at 08:38, Jim wrote:
> Someone sent me a .rar file.  I've never heard of that format.  Is there 
> a utility on Linux that will read it? If not, what Windows utility reads it?
> 

I had not heard of a rar file until a couple months ago. Now I'm seeing
it all over. What is driving the use of this compression format? Does it
do a better job than zip or gzip? Why do we need yet another compression
format?

Mike