this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
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Fyi everyone: you can download the entirety of Wikipedia yourself from kiwix and it's only about 50gb for the whole thing, 100 with all images.
That's highly dependent on how many, or which, languages you download, I think.
This is true, I was referring to english wikipedia.
got a link or instructions? i’ll do it tomorrow as the next step on my self hosting journey.
Docker setup instructions: github.com/kiwix/kiwix-tools/docker/server/README.md
Download zim files from library.kiwix.org via direct download, torrent or magnet.
thank yewwww.
There is also apps like Aard2 that allow you to have all of wikipedia (no images duh) offline on your phone. https://github.com/itkach/aard2-android
Its a general dictionary type app so it supports things other than wikipedia too. There is a link to the dictionary files in the readme on that github, but it can be confusing.
If you have 23GB of space and your storage isnt fat32 formatted: https://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/aarddict/enwiki/enwiki20250801-slob/
If it is fat32 then you gotta download it in 4GB chunks: https://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/aarddict/enwiki/enwiki20250801-vol-slob/
The downside to this is that i (you?) often want very recent fresh info from wikipedia and this obviously doesnt work well for that because it doesnt support updating in a way where you only have to download the changes. If somebody knows of an app that supports this, where you only have to download a couple MB of changes every day to keep the entire thing up to date let me know.
sweet.
alas, internet friend, i’m old enuf to have had printed (gasp) encyclopedias purchased new in 1985, so i can cope with static data just fine.
i am curious, nonetheless - i see these are dated pretty recently. are these ftps updated with some kind of regularity so i can continue to dl them up until all knowledge gets banned for being too inclusive and woke and something something?
Always glad to share cool projects :)
If you go up to the parent directory of the links i sent it shows the last couple versions (20250801, 20250601, 20250201, 20241201) so it gets updated every few months yes. I believe the URL has stayed the same for the past decade or so too, so it should be fairly easy to automate that even.
you’re a champion among lemmings.
thank you my friend :)
it will be out of date in an hour
Any entry that is changing hourly (or even monthly) is probably not a topic you should be relying on an encyclopedia entry for anyway. Use the tool for what the tool is good for.
Most of Wikipedia articles hardly change over time. The entry for potassium for example, or Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. The controversial or recent current events topics get most updates.
Doesnt matter really if you have nothing at one point.
I used my old Grollier's Multimedia Encyclopedia CD for years.