How to Open Wikipedia in Linux Terminal

66

Wikipedia is similar to a deep well of knowledge that frequently proves helpful in our daily lives. In order to assist you find the answers fast, Google frequently moves Wikipedia results to the top of the search result pages. Have you ever considered using Wikipedia in a terminal, though? For those that work on the console all day, it might be really useful.  If you are using a Linux computer, you may always launch a browser and search for relevant topics on Wikipedia.

On the other hand, there is another choice: wikit, if you are signed on through a terminal emulator like PuTTY or you simply prefer using the command line. Wikit is a tool that uses the command line to search Wikipedia and returns content summaries on a wide range of subjects. It is simple to use, enables quick queries, and lets you save the rendered data in a file if you so choose. We mentioned below are the steps to open Wikipedia in Linux Terminal.

How to Open Wikipedia in Linux Terminal

Install and Use wikit

Run following command for Debian-based systems if you don’t already have JavaScript and Node Package Manager installed; wikit depends on them.

sudo apt install nodejs npm

On Fedora-based machines:

sudo dnf install nodejs npm

For Red Hat-derived distros:

sudo yum install nodejs npm

You should be aware that installing npm and JS, will necessitate a download of around 500MB.

Now you can use npm to install wikit:

sudo npm install wikit -g

Using wikit is simple, just type “wikit” followed by your query. Quotes are not required for multi-word queries. For example:

wikit eiffel tower

You can change the line length of the output with the –line flag.

wikit eiffel tower –line 72

Final Words

So here we conclude our article on how to Open Wikipedia in Linux Terminal. Described as “A command line application for getting Wikipedia summaries effortlessly,” wikit is the creation of Kory Schneider. Wikit will fetch anything above the table of contents and show it in your preferred terminal emulator with only one command and a few optional flags. There is no requirement to launch or even have an installed browser. For that matter, a GUI. Since opening a Wikipedia entry in a browser will load a lot of HTML and several hundred kilobytes or even megabytes of images, wikit is especially helpful if you have a limited amount of bandwidth.