Nithin Kamath's Weblog

Wordweb in windows is one of the popular dictionaries available, but when you shift to Linux there are quite limited number of softwares and most of them connect to the net to give the results, at least so I thought.

In Linux there is already an ‘Dictionary’ which is installed by default (available in either applications >> accessories/office) but it connects to the net to get the result, but you can override this default behavior to use the local dictionary. For this you need the package ‘dictd’ dictionary server.

Follow the following steps (the below mentioned steps are for Ubuntu/Mint but you should be install the same using the software manager provided in your distro)

• Install dictd package
  sudo apt-get install dictd
  This command will install the ‘dictd’ server on your machine and it will automatically start the server also.
• The next step is installing a dictionary.
  sudo aptitude install dict-gcide
  This command will install the ‘The Collaborative International Dictionary of English’, there are other dictionaries also available which you can browse through using your package manager, just search for ‘dict-’
• Open the dictionary (applications >> accessories/office).
• Goto ‘Edit -> Preferences’.
• Click on ‘Add’ and enter the following details:
  Description:
  Transport : Dictionary Server (Default option)
  Hostname : 127.0.0.1
  Port : 2628 (Default option)

  Click on ‘Add’ button and choose the newly created dictionary source from among the radio listed options.

Thats it!! You are done you can search for words just like you do in WordWeb.

Additional Details:

• You can also add dictionary applet to your gnome-applets by right clicking on the panel and choosing the ‘Add -> Dictionary Lookup’ option.
• You can also install the package ‘dict’, this will provide a command line option to search for words. For example you can type the following ‘dict keyboard’ to get the meaning of ‘keyboard’.
• By default the server allows access only from ‘localhost’ and the IP ‘127.0.0.1′ and defaults to port ‘2628′ you can change the setting in the file ‘/etc/dictd/dictd.conf’ if you need to allow other machines in your network to access the dictionary installed in the system.