We all know about Wikipedia.It is the biggest free online encyclopedia.It contains millions of pages containing information about all the things.But in order to access this information you must have an internet connection.In this post I will tell you how to download the entire Wikipedia on your PC and then use it , of course,without any internet connection.
Kiwix, a free open source small piece of software made this possible.Kiwix enables you to have the whole Wikipedia at hand wherever you go. You don’t need Internet, everything is stored on your computer, USB flash drive or DVD.So Are You interested?If yes then follow these few guidelines and you will have all the Wikipedia stored in your PC.
Kiwix, a free open source small piece of software made this possible.Kiwix enables you to have the whole Wikipedia at hand wherever you go. You don’t need Internet, everything is stored on your computer, USB flash drive or DVD.So Are You interested?If yes then follow these few guidelines and you will have all the Wikipedia stored in your PC.
- First you need to download the Wikipedia database.It is quite large,about 18 GB , so it may take hours or days depending on your internet connection.For downloading Wikipedia go to http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page and click on Download Wikipedia in right top corner.
If you want to download using a torrent client like utorrent or vuze, then there is a option right below the download link.
- When you have downloaded the above file(in .zip format) which is about 18 GB, then you need to download the kiwix .It is very small piece of software and you can download it from here- Download here.
- It is a .zip file ,so extract it and install the .exe file .After Installing the kiwix software run it.
- Now extract the file you downloaded in first step (18 GB file) in a folder.After extracting you can see the folder name ‘data’ inside which another folder with name ‘content’.Inside this folder there will be file with extension .zimaa. You need to open this file in kiwix.
- In Kiwix select File ,the select open file and select the .zimaa file.
- Now Wikipedia will be opened inside the kiwix browser and you can access any information by searching it in search box.
kiwix is especially intended to make Wikipedia available without using Internet.It supports text search and is a pretty small and efficient software. You can perfectly use it with small or old computers. It runs on a big range of operating systems, on Android and on the three main PC operating systems: Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X and GNU/Linux distributions.
It has inbuilt library where you can find some other files and download them to your PC to access with kiwix.Here is a screenshot of kiwix with Wikipedia opened in it.
If you face any problem at any step, let me know by commenting below.