Repository github.com/kiwix/kiwix Operating system | Development status Active Platform IA-32, x64 | |
 | ||
Developer(s) Emmanuel Engelhart,
Renaud Gaudin Preview release 0.9 / November 1, 2014; 2 years ago (2014-11-01) | ||
Kiwix is a free and open-source offline web browser created by Emmanuel Engelhart and Renaud Gaudin in 2007. It was first launched to allow offline access to Wikipedia, but has since expanded to include other projects from the Wikimedia foundation as well as public domain texts from the Project Gutenberg. Available in more than 100 languages, Kiwix has been included in several high-profile projects, from smuggling operations in North Korea to Google Impact Challenge's recipient Bibliothèques Sans Frontières.
Contents
History
After becoming a Wikipedia editor in 2004, Emmanuel 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.
In 2012 Kiwix won a grant from Wikimedia France to build kiwix-plug, which was deployed in universities in eleven countries in the Afripedia Project.
In February 2013 Kiwix won SourceForge's Project of the Month award.
Kiwix won a CH Open Source Award in 2015.
Description
The software is designed as an offline reader for web content. It is used on computers without an internet connection, computers with a slow or expensive connection, and to avoid censorship. It can also be used while travelling (e.g. on a plane or train).
Users first download Kiwix, then download content for offline viewing with Kiwix (see picture). Compression saves disk space and bandwidth. All of English-language Wikipedia, with pictures, fits on a USB stick (54 GB as of May 2016, or 16 GB with no pictures).
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 web browser. Kiwix offers full text search, tabbed navigation and the option to export articles to PDF and HTML.
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. The other computers see an ordinary website. kiwix-plug is a version for plug computers which is often used to provide a wifi server.
Kiwix uses the deprecated Mozilla framework localised on Translatewiki.net, but plans to replace it.
Available content
A list of content available on Kiwix exists; sublists for content in specific languages also exist. Content can be loaded through Kiwix itself (see screenshot).
Since 2014, most Wikipedia versions are available for download in various different languages. The servers are updated every two to six months, depending on the size of the file. For English Wikipedia, a full version containing pictures as well as alternative version containing text only can be downloaded from the archive. This allows users to save disk space and bandwidth while downloading.
Besides Wikipedia, content from the Wikimedia foundation such as Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage, Wikibooks and Wikiversity are available for offline viewing in various different languages.
In November 2014 a ZIM version of all open texts forming part of Project Gutenberg was made available.
Besides public domain content, works licensed under a Creative Commons license are available for download. For example, offline versions of the Ubuntu wiki containing user documentation for the Ubuntu operating system, ZIM editions of TED conference talks and videos from Crash Course are available in the Kiwix archive as ZIM file formats.
Deployments
As a software development project, Kiwix itself is not directly involved in deployment projects. However, Wikimedia or third party organisations use the software as a component of their own projects. Examples include:
Stand-alone
Kiwix can be installed on a desktop computer as a stand-alone program through the Kiwix webpage.
Package managers and app stores
Kiwix was formerly available in the native package managers of some Linux distributions. However, Kiwix is currently not available in most package databases, due to XULRunner, a program on which Kiwix depends, being deprecated by Mozilla and removed from the package databases. Kiwix is available in the Sugar and ArchLinux Linux distributions. It is also available on Android.
The Kiwix Linux Packaging Project aims to get Kiwix into Linux package databases; it is currently seeking 10 000 Swiss francs and an SSL security certificate.
Kiwix is available on GooglePlay and iTunes.
Motivation
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. Our users are all over the world: sailors on the oceans, poor students thirsty for knowledge, globetrotters almost living in planes, world’s citizens suffering from censorship or free minded prisoners. For all these people, Kiwix provides a simple and practical solution to ponder about the world.”