Wikipedia is on a CD, and Mozilla is backstage

[kumarmohit]

Wkipedia on CD from www.wikipediaondvd.com

I had been asking Digit to give Wikipedia pack for Webaroo in special issue for some time now. However today morning when I saw this WikipediaonDVD in the CNET TV podcast which is actually on a CD or even less as of now (just above 400MB) and I thought why not give this a try.

Site: Very simple rather minimal should be the word, just

Download: There are two files: An ISO image above 400MB and a BZip compressed ISO image somewhere above 200 MB. For free Download Do Not try HTTP or FTP, the are dead slow. I tried torrents and got optimal speeds. Alternatively you can buy for Price : 13.90 USD
Shipping cost : 1.54 USD
Total : 15.44 USD

Installation: No install required for windows Click the EXE and run, just as I want my programs to run, no messing the registry and user permissions. There is a folder for Mac stuff but I have not even entered it.

Number of articles: Around 2000, articles taken from English Wikipedia of course.

Powered by: The opensource KiwiX which is aimed to making an offline version of wikipedia.*www.kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page Distributed by French Company - LinterWeb.

Pros:
~ No install required
~ Excellent size management
~ Interface can be skinned
~ Free of cost if you can download the disc

Cons:
~ No tabbed interface
~ Does not act as a front end to wikipedia
~ Limited only to internal contents except where external links are given.
~ Cannot update itself AFAIK
~ Its Wikipedia, but heck, you cant edit it

Overall nice thing to have if you will be disconnected from time to time and do not want to by Encarta or Britannica (They are resource hogs anyway). For a 0.5 beta version, the software is great and will be greater when actal DVD comes out.

*img223.imageshack.us/img223/8572/kiwixsx2.th.jpg

 

[Pathik]

Re: Wkipedia on CD from www.wikipediaondvd.com

nice one

 

[Kiran.dks]

Re: Wkipedia on CD from www.wikipediaondvd.com

Good find Kumar. Thanks.

If anyone has trouble in getting the link, here is a direct link for download:

kiwix-0.5.iso

Size: 421.8MB

 

[phreak0ut]

Re: Wkipedia on CD from www.wikipediaondvd.com

I'll probably give this to my friend who's on a dial-up

 

[kumarmohit]

Re: Wkipedia on CD from www.wikipediaondvd.com

Guys I recommend the BZip version for download coz it has lesser size. Just download 7zip as well coz it can handle Bzip and ISO as well. Here is the link to download page for
*www.wikipediaondvd.com/site.php?temp=down

For P2P dloads (Highly Recommended)
*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Torrent_Project/Version_0.5

Dear Team Digit, this does not mean that my webaroo requaest is no longer holding any good, I wud still prefer it until this actually comes on the DVD.

 

[eddie]

Source: Standblog

A “Wikipedia CD” has been made available for download on BitTorrent.com. The CD comprises of 2011 hand-picked educational articles aimed at helping schools enhance their curriculum and children learn. The CD has been compiled by volunteers for “the world’s largest orphan charity”, SOS Children and contains more than 8000 images and over 3.5 million words (equivalent to a 4,000 page book in text alone). The included articles are of particular interest to children (dinosaurs, space travel, the Solar System, plants and animals) and a wide variety of other scientific and geographical topics.

A few amusing facts about this CD are:

• It's based on XULRunner 1.8.0.4 (confirmed by a quick phone conversation with the main developer)
• It's made by a French company, Linterweb, based in the small country-side town of Val de Reuil, Normandy, France
• Linterweb has nothing to do with article selection (which is done by the Editorial Team, itself part of the Wikimedia Community)
• This is actually the second time that XULRunner is used to do CD-versions of Wikipedia.

More info: SOS Children

It just gives you a good feeling to know how open source is actually changing lives
I wonder what would have happened if the company had to buy some development kit from a proprietary company and then ask for licenses for each distributed copy.

 

[freebird]

is already posted.check

 

[eddie]

It was an old news so I did think that it must have been posted before but even after searching really hard...I couldn't find anything. None of the five related links on the bottom of the page talk about anything like this either...so I thought may be it was new. Could you please link us to the old thread so that I can report this one and get it merged?

EDIT: Looks like you are talking about this thread
*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?p=483167#post483167

That thread didn't come up in my searches because Wikipedia is misspelled in the title. Also, this thread is about Mozilla and CD for SOS Children, not Kiwix. These are two similar looking things but different