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Kiwix

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Kiwix
Developer(s)
Stable release(s)
Desktop2.3.1 / 16 April 2023; 19 months ago (2023-04-16)[1]
Android3.10 / 27 May 2024; 5 months ago (2024-05-27)[2]
iOS1.15.6 / 24 May 2022; 2 years ago (2022-05-24)[3]
Electron2.4.4 / 14 April 2023; 19 months ago (2023-04-14)[4]
UWP2.4.4 / 13 April 2023; 19 months ago (2023-04-13)[5]
Browsers3.6.0 / 12 November 2022; 2 years ago (2022-11-12)[6]
Repository
Written inC++ (desktop), Kotlin (Android), Swift (iOS, macOS), JavaScript (browser, Electron, UWP)
Operating systemAndroid, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux, Windows 10 Mobile, Ubuntu Touch[7]
Size
  • Desktop: 121 MB
  • Electron: 71.1 MB
  • Android: 80 MB
  • iOS: 48.3 MB
  • UWP: 12.1 MB
Available in100 languages[8]
LicenseGPLv3
Websitewww.kiwix.org
Library of history and rationalwiki etc.
Kiwix Android App

Kiwix is a free and open-source offline web browser created by Emmanuel Engelhart and Renaud Gaudin in 2007.[9] It was first launched to allow 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

[edit]

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 Wikimedia France to build a kiwix-plug, which was deployed to universities in eleven countries known as the Afripedia Project.[12][13] In February 2013 Kiwix won SourceForge's Project of the Month award[14] and an open-source award in 2015.[15]

Description

[edit]

The software is designed as an offline reader for a web content. It can be used on computers without an internet connection, computers with a slow or expensive connection, or to avoid censorship. It can also be used while travelling (e.g. on a plane or train). It also exists as browser extensions (see below). Of course, the content being archived offline means it is no longer editable, if it was previously.

Users first download Kiwix (or a browser extension), then download content for offline viewing with Kiwix. Compression saves disk space and bandwidth. All of English-language Wikipedia, with pictures, fits on a large USB stick or external media.[a][14][16]

All content files are indexed and compressed in ZIM format, which makes them smaller, but leaves them easy to search and selectively decompress.

The ZIM files are then opened with Kiwix, which looks and behaves like a web browser, or with a suitably enabled conventional browser. Kiwix offers full text search, tabbed navigation, and the option to export articles to PDF and HTML.[8]

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] This is suitable for use cases where no technical skill is available; it is a "plug-and-play" solution.

Available content

[edit]
Reading Wikipedia through Kiwix on a boat in the 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 Creative Commons license are available for download as well. For example, offline versions of the Ubuntu wiki containing user documentation for the Ubuntu operating system,[25] ZIM editions of TED conference talks[26] and videos from Crash Course are available in the Kiwix archive as ZIM file formats.[27]

Historic Wikipedia articles selection releases

[edit]

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

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Kiwix can be installed on a desktop computer as a stand-alone program, installed on a tablet or smartphone, or can create its own 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:

Locations of 13 universities in 11 countries where Kiwix was deployed as part of the Afripedia Project

Package managers and app stores

[edit]
Medical Wikipedia app on a smartphone

Kiwix is available in the native package managers of most Linux distributions. From 2014 to 2020, it was absent, due to XULRunner, a program on which Kiwix depended, being deprecated by Mozilla and removed from the package databases.[49][50]

Kiwix is available on Debian[51] and Debian-based distributions, such as Ubuntu[52] and Linux Mint,[citation needed] Fedora[53] and other RPM-based distributions, such as openSUSE,[54] and on the 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 Microsoft Store,[5] on Google Play,[58] and Apple's iOS App Store.[3] It is also available as an installable HTML5 app (Kiwix JS) in the form of browser extensions for Firefox and Chromium (Chrome, Edge) and as a Progressive Web Application (PWA),[59] all of which work offline. Electron packages of the HTML5 app are compiled for Windows and popular Linux distributions.[60] Since 2015, a series of "customized apps" have also been released, of which Medical Wikipedia and PhET simulations are the two largest.

See also

[edit]
  • 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

[edit]

Notes

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  1. ^ 110 GB with pictures, 57 GB without pictures, and 7.4 GB with only the introduction, as of 13 November 2024.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "kiwix-desktop: Releases". GitHub.
  2. ^ "Kiwix for Android 3.10 is out!". 27 May 2024.
  3. ^ a b "Kiwix on the App Store". App Store. 29 May 2023.
  4. ^ "Kiwix JS Windows/Linux: Releases". GitHub.
  5. ^ a b "Kiwix JS". Windows Store. Microsoft.
  6. ^ "Kiwix JS". GitHub.
  7. ^ "OpenStore". OpenStore. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  8. ^ a b "Kiwix". SourceForge. Retrieved 22 March 2012.
  9. ^ a b c d Sutherland, Joe. Emmanuel Engelhart, Inventor of Kiwix: the Offline Wikipedia Browser. In: Wikimedia Blog. 12 September 2014. Accessed on 26 November 2014.
  10. ^ "The plot to free North Korea with smuggled episodes of 'Friends'". Wired. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  11. ^ "Les Lauréats du Google Impact Challenge". Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  12. ^ Citazine article on Afripedia (in French)
  13. ^ Traoré, Kardiatou (13 August 2012). "Afripédia : un projet de promotion de Wikipédia en Afrique". www.afrik.com. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  14. ^ a b c d e f g "Kiwix Aims to spread Wikipedia's Reach". dice.com. 2013-02-04. Retrieved 2013-07-10.
  15. ^ "OSS Awards küren Schweizer Open-Source-Projekte". Netzwoche. 29 October 2015. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
  16. ^ a b "Content in all languages - Kiwix". wiki.kiwix.org. Retrieved 8 August 2016.
  17. ^ Kiwix-serve
  18. ^ "Kiwix-plug - Kiwix". wiki.kiwix.org. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  19. ^ a b "Sailing the South Pacific with a copy of Wikipedia on board: The Goodall Family". Wikimedia Blog. 15 November 2014. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  20. ^ "Content in all languages - Kiwix". wiki.kiwix.org. Retrieved 2017-06-09.
  21. ^ Truong, Kevin (2020-07-10). "You Can Download the Entirety of English Wikipedia to Browse Offline". Vice. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
  22. ^ Zim archive for Kiwix
  23. ^ 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.
  24. ^ "Words and what not: #Wikimedia & Project #Gutenberg - the sum of all knowledge". ultimategerardm.blogspot.ch. 20 November 2014. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  25. ^ Ubuntuusers Hilfsmittel
  26. ^ Kiwix archive for TED
  27. ^ Kiwix archive for additional content
  28. ^ "wikipediaondvd.com". 2007-04-27. Archived from the original on 27 April 2007. Retrieved 2022-06-22.
  29. ^ "Index of /archive/zim/wikipedia". download.kiwix.org. Retrieved 2022-06-22.
  30. ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.5 at download.kiwix.org".
  31. ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.5 at Internet Archive".
  32. ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.7 at download.kiwix.org".
  33. ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.7 at Internet Archive".
  34. ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.8 at download.kiwix.org".
  35. ^ "Wikipedia Version 0.8 at Internet Archive".
  36. ^ "Main Page - Kiwix". wiki.kiwix.org. Retrieved 16 February 2022.
  37. ^ "Afripedia project increasing off-line access to Wikipedia in Africa". Wikimedia Blog. 24 January 2013. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  38. ^ "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.
  39. ^ "Raspberry Pi in Masekelo: Bringing Wikipedia to a school without electricity". Wikimedia Blog. 17 March 2015. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  40. ^ "Children in Mali can now read Wikipedia offline, thanks to MALebooks e-readers". Wikimedia Blog. 14 May 2015. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  41. ^ "West African schools will test Kiwix, the offline Wikipedia reader". Wikimedia Outreach Education Newsletter. Wikimedia Foundation. 31 August 2016. Retrieved 11 June 2017.
  42. ^ "Kiwix is mentioned on the thank-you page". Zedaga (in French). Archived from the original on 7 August 2017. Retrieved 11 June 2017.
  43. ^ Fondation Orange: le programme "écoles numériques" Archived 5 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine.
  44. ^ "Hans Oleander: Using offline Wikipedia to guide tours at the bottom of the Earth". Wikimedia Blog. 10 October 2014. Retrieved 11 June 2017.
  45. ^ "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.
  46. ^ "Navigatrix.net - A Voyager's Companion". navigatrix.net. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  47. ^ "Navigatrix – the first Linux distribution for cruisers". Your Cruising Editor. 30 July 2010. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  48. ^ Amarilli, Antoine. "A local copy of Wikipedia with Kiwix - a3nm's blog". a3nm.net. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  49. ^ "Debian". wiki.kiwix.org. Retrieved 6 January 2020.
  50. ^ "Debian Package Tracker: kiwix offline Wikipedia reader". Debian Foundation. Retrieved 8 August 2022.[permanent dead link‍]
  51. ^ "Debian -- Details of package kiwix in bookworm". packages.debian.org. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
  52. ^ "Ubuntu – Details of package kiwix in kinetic". packages.ubuntu.com. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
  53. ^ "kiwix-desktop - Fedora Packages". packages.fedoraproject.org. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
  54. ^ "openSUSE Software". software.opensuse.org. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
  55. ^ "Arch Linux - kiwix-desktop 2.3.1-3 (x86_64)". archlinux.org. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
  56. ^ Kiwix Nixpkg, Nix/Nixpkgs/NixOS, 2023-06-24, retrieved 2023-06-24
  57. ^ "Kiwix". Flathub. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
  58. ^ "Kiwix, Wikipedia offline - Android Apps on Google Play". Google Play. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  59. ^ "Kiwix JS PWA". Retrieved 15 May 2021.
  60. ^ "Releases · kiwix/kiwix-js-windows". GitHub. Retrieved 2022-05-24.
  61. ^ "Add Support Kiwix Encyclopedia of Wikipedia ".zim" file type · Issue #267 · goldendict/goldendict". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-11-30.
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