When comparing Xarchiver vs Ark, the Slant community recommends Ark for most people. In the question“What are the best archivers on Linux?” Ark is ranked 7th while Xarchiver is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Ark is:
light on resources and fast
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Can show a file list without loading the whole archive
For 7zip-files (perhaps other types too) while File Roller cannot do this.
Pro Fast and light
light on resources and fast
Pro Traditional UI
it has a traditionl User interface
Pro Well integrated into KDE
it works nicely on Plasma
Pro De-deps
Cons
Con Segfaults when creating large archives
When creating large archives it crashes and doesn't show you any helpful message (unless you started it from the terminal you will get something like "[1] 14858 segmentation fault (core dumped) xarchiver").
Con Doesn't show a progress UI while it's creating an archive
You have to "guess" when it's done.
Con Not in active development
Xarchiver has only one maintainer and it seems he's not working on it actively.
Con Many KDE deps
It needs many KDE libs.
