UPDATE: I ditched Babiloo for Artha Dictionary. It has a lot more cool features and is perhaps the best available offline dictionary currently. It’s available in the Ubuntu software centre as well.
Lately I was using the Dictionary that comes as an accessory bundled with Ubuntu. It was good, but I thought it’d be wonderful to have an offline one.
After a lot of trials and errors, I settled with Babiloo. It’s a simple app which is available in the Ubuntu Software Centre as well. Several free dictionaries can be downloaded from here and installed in Babiloo. So far so good.
P.S. And I’m beginning to love the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (which can be downloaded from the above link).
EDIT: The above link to download dictionaries doesn’t seem to work anymore. You can download free dictionaries from this link.
I’m using stardict and very happy with it. Even the ensitip dictionary (Sinhala ENglish) is ported there by @geekaholic.
Yeah, I tried StarDict before Babiloo but wasn’t very happy about it. In Babiloo you can import any external dictionary easily.
Babiloo is no longer officially maintained. They even recommend StarDict!
Try Goldendict (install it from ubuntu software portal, it supports Stardict sinhala-english dictionay that you can download from http://madterminal.blogspot.co.nz/2011/07/sinhala-english-dictionary-for-ubuntu.html -unzip this dictionary before you install Goldendict ) . In Glodendict press F3 -> Wikipedia -> uncheck all . In main window select Sinhala-English, and try some words. Click ‘scan popup’ option to get sinhala meaning of any word you double click on any document.
Try sudo apt-get install goldendict ,use ubuntu software portal.