Kiwix
Renaud Gaudin | |
| Stable release(s) | |
|---|---|
| Repository | |
| Written in | |
| Size |
|
| Available in | 100 languages[8] |
| License | GPLv3 |
| Website | www |
Kiwix is a
offline access to Wikipedia, but has since expanded to include other projects from the Wikimedia Foundation, public domain texts from Project Gutenberg, many of the Stack Exchange sites, and many other resources. Available in more than 100 languages, Kiwix has been included in several high-profile projects, from smuggling operations in North Korea[10] to Google Impact Challenge's recipient Bibliothèques Sans Frontières.[11]
History
Founder Emmanuel Engelhart sees Wikipedia as a common good, saying "The contents of Wikipedia should be available for everyone! Even without Internet access. This is why I have launched the Kiwix project."[9]
After becoming a Wikipedia editor in 2004, Engelhart became interested in developing
offline versions of Wikipedia. A project to make a Wikipedia CD, initiated in 2003, was a trigger for the project.[9]
In 2012, Kiwix received a grant from
Open Source Award in 2015.[15]
Description
The software is designed as an
plane or train
).
Users first download Kiwix, then download content for offline viewing with Kiwix.
All content files are compressed in ZIM format, which makes them smaller, but leaves them easy to index, search, and selectively decompress.
The ZIM files are then opened with Kiwix, which looks and behaves like a
There is an
HTTP server version called kiwix-serve; this allows a computer to host Kiwix content, and make it available to other computers on a network.[17] The other computers see an ordinary website. Kiwix-hotspot is an HTTP server version for plug computers,[14] which is often used to provide a Wi-Fi server.[18]
Available content
South Pacific[19]
A list of content available on Kiwix is available for download, including language-specific sublists.[20] Content can be loaded through Kiwix itself.
Since 2014, most Wikipedia versions are available for download in various different languages.[16] The project was unable to produce up-to-date complete versions of English Wikipedia after October 2018 but started making releases again in July 2020.[21]
Besides Wikipedia, content from the Wikimedia Foundation such as Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, and Wikiversity are also available for offline viewing in various different languages.[22]
In November 2014, a ZIM version of all open texts forming part of Project Gutenberg was made available.[23][24]
Besides public domain content, works licensed under a
Crash Course are available in the Kiwix archive as ZIM file formats.[27]
Historic Wikipedia articles selection releases
Between 2007 and 2011, three CD/DVD versions containing a selection of articles from the English Wikipedia were released.[28] They are now available as Kiwix ZIM files:[29]
Deployments
Kiwix can be installed on a
WLAN environment from a Raspberry Pi
.
As a software development project, Kiwix itself is not directly involved in deployment projects. However, third party organizations do use the software as a component of their own projects. Examples include:
- Universities and libraries that cannot afford broadband Internet access.[36]
- The Afripedia Project set up kiwix servers in French-speaking universities, some of them with no Internet access, in 11 African countries.[37]
- The Afripedia Project set up kiwix servers in French-speaking universities, some of them with no Internet access, in 11
- developing countries, where access to the internet is difficult or too expensive.[14]
- Installed on computers used for the One Laptop per Child project.[9]
- Installed on Raspberry Pis for use in schools with no easy access to electricity in Tanzania[39] by the Tanzania Development Trust.
- Installed on tablets in schools in Mali as part of the MALebooks project.[40]
- Used by
- Deployed in NGOspecialized in education.
- The Fondation Orange has used kiwix-serve in its own French language technological knowledge product they have deployed in Africa.[43]
- A special version for the organization SOS Children's Villages was developed, initially for developing countries, but it is also used in the developed world.
- On a train or plane.[14][48]
- In European and US prison education programs.[14]
Package managers and app stores
Medical Wikipedia app on a smartphone
Kiwix is available in the native
Kiwix is available on
Sugar,[citation needed] Arch Linux,[55] and NixOS[56] distributions. A distribution-independent Flatpak version is also available.[57] It is also available on Android. Kiwix JS UWP and Electron packages are available in the native Windows package manager winget
.
Kiwix is available in the
PhET
simulations are the two largest.
See also
- GoldenDict supports the ZIM file format since 2013,[61] including offline use (except on Android) and the ability to create full-text indices.
- XOWA
- Internet-in-a-Box
Notes and references
Notes
- ^ 102 GB with pictures, 52 GB without pictures, and 13 GB with only the introduction, as of 22 March 2024.
References
- ^ "kiwix-desktop: Releases". GitHub.
- ^ "kiwix-android: Releases". GitHub.
- ^ App Store. 29 May 2023.
- ^ "Kiwix JS Windows/Linux: Releases". GitHub.
- ^ Windows Store. Microsoft.
- ^ "Kiwix JS". GitHub.
- ^ "OpenStore". OpenStore. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
- ^ a b "Kiwix". SourceForge. Retrieved 22 March 2012.
- ^ Wikimedia Blog. 12 September 2014. Accessed on 26 November 2014.
- ^ "The plot to free North Korea with smuggled episodes of 'Friends'". Wired. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
- ^ "Les Lauréats du Google Impact Challenge". Retrieved 27 April 2016.
- ^ Citazine article on Afripedia (in French)
- ^ Traoré, Kardiatou (13 August 2012). "Afripédia : un projet de promotion de Wikipédia en Afrique". www.afrik.com. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Kiwix Aims to spread Wikipedia's Reach". dice.com. 2013-02-04. Retrieved 2013-07-10.
- ^ "OSS Awards küren Schweizer Open-Source-Projekte". Netzwoche. 29 October 2015. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
- ^ a b "Content in all languages - Kiwix". wiki.kiwix.org. Retrieved 8 August 2016.
- ^ Kiwix-serve
- ^ "Kiwix-plug - Kiwix". wiki.kiwix.org. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ Wikimedia Blog. 15 November 2014. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ "Content in all languages - Kiwix". wiki.kiwix.org. Retrieved 2017-06-09.
- ^ Truong, Kevin (2020-07-10). "You Can Download the Entirety of English Wikipedia to Browse Offline". Vice. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
- ^ Zim archive for Kiwix
- ^ Engelhart, Emmanuel. 50.000 public domain books available to everybody, everywhere, offline. Wikisource-l-Mailinglist, Wikimedia Foundation. 19 November 2014. Accessed on 26 November 2014.
- ^ "Words and what not: #Wikimedia & Project #Gutenberg - the sum of all knowledge". ultimategerardm.blogspot.ch. 20 November 2014. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ Ubuntuusers Hilfsmittel
- ^ Kiwix archive for TED
- ^ Kiwix archive for additional content
- ^ "wikipediaondvd.com". 2007-04-27. Archived from the original on 27 April 2007. Retrieved 2022-06-22.
- ^ "Index of /archive/zim/wikipedia". download.kiwix.org. Retrieved 2022-06-22.
- ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.5 at download.kiwix.org".
- ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.5 at Internet Archive".
- ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.7 at download.kiwix.org".
- ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.7 at Internet Archive".
- ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.8 at download.kiwix.org".
- ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.8 at Internet Archive".
- ^ "Main Page - Kiwix". wiki.kiwix.org. Retrieved 16 February 2022.
- Wikimedia Blog. 24 January 2013. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ "Off-line solutions for reaching students with limited or no internet access". UNESCO International Bureau of Education. 7 May 2020. Archived from the original on 28 June 2021. Retrieved 16 February 2022.
- Wikimedia Blog. 17 March 2015. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- Wikimedia Blog. 14 May 2015. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ "West African schools will test Kiwix, the offline Wikipedia reader". Wikimedia Outreach Education Newsletter. Wikimedia Foundation. 31 August 2016. Retrieved 11 June 2017.
- ^ "Kiwix is mentioned on the thank-you page". Zedaga (in French). Archived from the original on 7 August 2017. Retrieved 11 June 2017.
- ^ Fondation Orange: le programme "écoles numériques" Archived 5 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine.
- Wikimedia Blog. 10 October 2014. Retrieved 11 June 2017.
- ^ "Kiwix'le Wikipedia'ya ulaşmak hala mümkün". gazetekarinca.com (in Turkish). 5 May 2017. Archived from the original on 6 May 2017. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ "Navigatrix.net - A Voyager's Companion". navigatrix.net. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ "Navigatrix – the first Linux distribution for cruisers". Your Cruising Editor. 30 July 2010. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ Amarilli, Antoine. "A local copy of Wikipedia with Kiwix - a3nm's blog". a3nm.net. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ "Debian". wiki.kiwix.org. Retrieved 6 January 2020.
- ^ "Debian Package Tracker: kiwix offline Wikipedia reader". Debian Foundation. Retrieved 8 August 2022.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Debian -- Details of package kiwix in bookworm". packages.debian.org. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
- ^ "Ubuntu – Details of package kiwix in kinetic". packages.ubuntu.com. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
- ^ "kiwix-desktop - Fedora Packages". packages.fedoraproject.org. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
- ^ "openSUSE Software". software.opensuse.org. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
- ^ "Arch Linux - kiwix-desktop 2.3.1-3 (x86_64)". archlinux.org. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
- ^ Kiwix Nixpkg, Nix/Nixpkgs/NixOS, 2023-06-24, retrieved 2023-06-24
- ^ "Kiwix". Flathub. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
- ^ "Kiwix, Wikipedia offline - Android Apps on Google Play". Google Play. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ "Kiwix JS PWA". Retrieved 15 May 2021.
- ^ "Releases · kiwix/kiwix-js-windows". GitHub. Retrieved 2022-05-24.
- ^ "Add Support Kiwix Encyclopedia of Wikipedia ".zim" file type · Issue #267 · goldendict/goldendict". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-11-30.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kiwix.
