In light of the recent Crowdstrike crash revealing how weak points in IT infrastructure can have wide ranging effects, I figured this might be an interesting one.
The entirety of wikipedia is periodically uploaded here, along with many other useful wikis and How To websites (ex. iFixit tutorials and WikiHow): https://download.kiwix.org/zim
You select the archive you want, then the language and archive version (for example, you can get an archive with no pictures, to save on space). For the totality of the english wikipedia you’d select the “wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2024-01.zim”
The archives are packed as .zim files, which can be read with the Kiwix app completely offline.
I have several USBs I keep that have some of these archives along with the app installer. In the event of some major catastrophe I’d at least be able to access some potentially useful information. I have no stake in Kiwix, and don’t know if there are other alternative apps and schemes, just thought it was neat.
I tried to download it but couldn’t get it to work :(
Download the kiwix app for whatever OS you’re using, then go into Kiwix and click on the folder icon in the app and navigate to where the .zim file you downloaded is located. If you click it it should automatically pop-up and be viewable.
If you did that and it’s still failing, is it giving you a specific error or anything?