Did you know that it's possible to view the content of the biggest and most widely used online encyclopedia without the need for Internet connectivity? That's right, Wikipedia, with over 10 million articles in 253 languages can be viewed offline in your Linux box anytime, anywhere.There are actually 4 easy ways to take your favorite Wikipedia offline:
1. Download Wikipedia as database XML or SQL dump
HERE you can find the complete copy of all Wikimedia wikis, in the form of wikitext source and metadata embedded in XML. A number of raw database tables in SQL form are also available.2. Download or Purchase Wikipedia on DVD
This is perhaps the easiest way to get Wikipedia for offline use. However, it is currently available in English and only contains around 2,000 selected articles. --The articles were chosen based on criteria for quality and importance set by the Wikipedia community. According to Wikimedia Foundation and Linterweb, larger releases in a variety of languages are coming real soon.
3. Static HTML dumps
Grab or download pages from all Wikipedia wikis in HTML format HERE. Note that the June 2008 edition dump has no image snapshot, it's just HTML. The archives are packaged as a 7-zipped tar file.
4. Pocket Wikipedia
The other easy way to take Wikipedia with you is by downloading and installing "Pocket Wikipedia". Its download size is only about 180MB but it contains hand-checked selection of Wikipedia articles the size of a fifteen volume encyclopedia with 24,000 images and 14 million words. It was first created for the PocketPC platform, but it is now available for the Linux desktop.
Grab or download pages from all Wikipedia wikis in HTML format HERE. Note that the June 2008 edition dump has no image snapshot, it's just HTML. The archives are packaged as a 7-zipped tar file.
4. Pocket Wikipedia
The other easy way to take Wikipedia with you is by downloading and installing "Pocket Wikipedia". Its download size is only about 180MB but it contains hand-checked selection of Wikipedia articles the size of a fifteen volume encyclopedia with 24,000 images and 14 million words. It was first created for the PocketPC platform, but it is now available for the Linux desktop.
There you have it. An offline Wikipedia is indeed very handy in my case because I travel a lot in places without Internet connection.
How about you? Do you still consider an offline encyclopedia useful these days?
How about you? Do you still consider an offline encyclopedia useful these days?
Since I don't have Internet at home I use offline wikipedia with the excellent "Wikipedia Dump Reader" from Kde-Apps.org. I do miss the images though.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this really handy info. I didn't know that you can use Wikipedia offline until now. I dual boot Windows and Linux and use the already outdated Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia when I'm offline. Now I think I'm gonna forget it and download Wikipedia DVD instead. Thanks a lot.
ReplyDeleteHere is another....
ReplyDeleteBrowse English Wikipedia offline, and cache new articles and images if online.
DVD iso image is designed for WinXP - it will autoplay if inserted.
You may also use it as a local server under Linux or OSX
Database contains 364,097 articles, and most of the thumbnails.
Videos were selected by the Goatman for the Philippines.
(written in Python, and opensource)
click here for the torrent
old review but still somewhat relevant!
ReplyDeletean offline wikipedia reader is vitally important and many people in the technology industry somehow manage to forget that millions apon millions of people out there DONT have access to the internet, even though they have wikipedia offline capable machines! And yet workable offline wikipedia linux native readers are for some reason a low priority? Why is that? Some kinda, anti wikipedia sentiment? Get over it! Make that knowledge, or source of opininated material persay, avaliable to the billions of people who don't have internet connections!