Running a local copy of Wikipedia

Factual Questions
1

Given the recent attacks on Wikipedia by Musk and his cronies, I have a strong feeling that the site will be forced offline within the next year or so. So I’d like to preserve its content, at least for my use – and it may come in handy after the apocalypse, when the survival of my band of misfits hinges on knowing the airspeed velocity of an unladen sparrow.

Wikipedia offers a way to download the content as a Very Large File. I did so about a month ago and stored the file on my server in the basement.

But I would like to confirm that I can actually use/display this content. The list of possible software for this is very confusing, and so far I haven’t found a combination that works with my Very Large File. I have Windows and Linux computers, plus Android and iOS devices. It would be nice if at least one of those worked.

Has anybody here succeeded at operating an offline Wikipedia archive?

2

This may be considered a hijack, but can you provide a cite showing there is a credible risk of Wikipedia being “forced offline”? Musk and his cronies may not like it, but Wikipedia isn’t breaking any laws, as far as I know, and we still have the first amendment the last time I checked.

3

[Moderating]

In FQ? Definitely. Save that question for P&E.

4

OK, let’s forget my mention of Musk.

My goal is to operate Wikipedia, at least the English part, entirely on my LAN with no Internet connection. In an ideal world this would include pictures and media, but those would probably not fit on my 3-terabyte disk.

5

Googling, the English language Wikipedia would be 100 GB with images, though I don’t know if that includes the edit history for each page.

6

Wikimedia Commons alone is 359.52 TB. I’d stick to text.

FWIW,

ETA: Sorry. None of that really answers the OP’s question.

7

This is what you need:

You can then download a backup from Wikipedia and run it locally.

Here’s another:

The Wiki backup is 110GB.

8

Here’s a project where someone used Kiwix to make a portable off-grid wikipedia appliance

9

Points lost for not including the words “Don’t Panic” in large, friendly letters on the cover.

10

Thanks for the suggestions!

I installed XOWA first, then found out the readily-available Wikipedia content was from 2019, or 2017 in some alternate sources.

So I also installed Kiwix, which works on Linux or Windows or various other platforms, as the video above hints. The Kiwix ecosystem provides easy access to fresh Wikipedia content (2024 apparently), and also offers much more (TED content, LEGO answers, Stack Overflow, etc.). That will give me much to consume in my bunker as the apocalypse unfolds!

As a first step, right now I have a usable Wikipedia in English without images, I’m looking at what to download next.

Thank you!