>>(shrug) I guess it could be worse -- the distribution archive might've been in one of those formats that used to be popular in the past, but now almost forgotten -- like ARC (ones created using PKARC were often a pain to deal with unless you had PKARC -- there were a few other archivers with their own variants too), LHA/LZH (apt to run into this from some sources in Asia -- but finding download for it could be a problem -- most sites that have it tend to be in Japanese, Korean or Chinese language), ZOO (actually a pretty neat format -- as it offered some features, like ability to store multiple versions of the same file in the same archive -- much in the same way you could in VAX/VMS -- implementations weren't limited to PCs, as you could find implementations for various mainframe and minicomputer systems).
>
>Ok; you convince me that RAR is the lesser of many evils :)

Reccommend a subdir with portable versions of file manager and compression tools.
Zip, RAR, pkArc, 7zip and TAR available and you are set for most situations via USB stick even elsewhere