about Sabily

Sabily (Arabic: سبيلي‎, IPA: [sæˈbiːliː], My Way) is Linux distribution based on the Ubuntu, designed by and for Muslims.

 Formerly called "Ubuntu Muslim Edition", Sabily was released from 2007 to 2011, and is currently classed as "dormant" by DistroWatch.

Sabily is designed for Muslim users to have “out of the box” Arabic language support and Islamic software and tools installed, including a prayer times tool, a Qur'an study tool, a Hijri calendar, etc.

The Unity shell is based on GNOME 3 on Sabily 11.10, Unity 2D for graphic cards without 3D capabilities. The Unity shell became available on the Sabily 11.04 Badr DVD. Ubuntu Classic Desktop was the default desktop in Sabily (11.04), but Unity in Ubuntu 11.04. New applications in Badr: Islamic Date, Zakat Calc, Gufw, DesktopNova, AutoKey, record My Desktop, Anki. The full version of Sabily comes with out of the box educational software, codecs for the most used media formats. Wisabi is a Sabily 11.04 installer for Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 based on Wubi.

History

Sabily was previously named as Ubuntu Muslim Edition (UbuntuME). Sabily is following releasing cycle of Ubuntu. After Ubuntu 9.04, It was changed to Sabily.

• UbuntuME 7.04 released 12/10/2007
• UbuntuME 7.10 released 02/12/2007
• UbuntuME 8.04 released 17/05/2008
• UbuntuME 8.04.1 released 22/07/2008
• Sabily 9.04 Taibah released 12/05/2009
• Sabily 9.10 Gaza released 27/12/2009
• Sabily 10.04 Manarat released 28/06/2010
• Sabily 10.10 Al-Quds released 02/11/2010
• Sabily 11.04 Badr released 05/05/2011
• Sabily 11.10 Uhud released 19/12/2011

Versions available

There are currently three versions of Sabily.

• Small version (967.96 MB), contains the main Sabily packages, including artwork and Islamic applications and Arabic support.
• Full version (1.55 GB), contains the same as the Small version plus multimedia, educational and miscellaneous packages.
• Ultimate version (3.3 GB), has the same content as the Full version, plus Qur'an offline recitations provided by Muhammad Siddeeq al-Minshawi, Huzify, Saad al-Ghamadi and Mishary Rashed Alafasy.

The Ultimate version is useful mainly when not connected to the Internet, yet all Sabily versions provide online Qur'an recitations.

Sabily is available as a Live DVD, which can be booted on the host computer without installation. The Wisabi installer can install Sabily to the hard disk within Microsoft Windows, without involving risky formatting or partitioning.

Additional software

As compared to Ubuntu:

• zekr: Qur'anic Study Tool
• minbar: Islamic prayer times application
• monajat: application that popups prayers every predetermined time
• Firefox-praytimes: Firefox extension that displays Islamic daily prayer times
• webstrict: UI frontend to DansGuardian (web content filtering tool)
• nanny: the GNOME Nanny parental-control system
• thwab: Electronic Encyclopedia System
• hijra: Islamic calendar
• mus-haf Othman: Othman Qur'an Browser
• noor: Qur'an viewer
• fsool: abbreviated chapters in the Messenger vita
• rejaal: Men around the prophet

Arabic support

• language-pack-ar: translations for language Arabic
• language-pack-gnome-ar: GNOME translations for language Arabic
• mozilla-Firefox-locale-ar: Mozilla Firefox Arabic language/region package
• aspell-ar: Arabic dictionary for aspell
• acon: Text console arabization
• bicon: Console that supports bidirectional text display
• Arab eyes qamoos: Arabic-English dictionary
• fonts-hosny-amiri: Arabic Naskh style typographically oriented font (Amiri is a classical Arabic typeface in Naskh style for typesetting books and other running text)

Sabily software

Zekr is an open platform Quran study tool for browsing and researching on the Quran. Recitations and translations are available for download.

Small version DVD available online recitations

• Abdulbasit Abdussamad (64kbit/s)
• Mishary bin Rashid Al-Afasy (128kbit/s)
• Saad Al-Ghamdi (40kbit/s)
• Mohammed Siddiq Al-Minshawi (16kbit/s)
• Maher Al-Muaiqly (128kbit/s)
• Abu Bakr Ash-Shatri (128kbit/s)
• Saud Al-Shuraim (128kbit/s)
• Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais (192kbit/s)

Minbar indicates the time when Muslims should pray. It runs in background as a tray icon and plays the "athan" (call to prayer) at prayer times. Minbar works with the main calculation methods, such as Muslim League (default), Shafii, and Hanafi. Muslims observe salat five times a day, and Minbar helps to remind of daily prayer times.

Monajat is an application for GNU/Linux and Windows that displays Azkar messages. It runs in background as a tray icon and displays hadiths.

The application an application provided by the Sabily community.

Zakat Calc is an application for GNU/Linux. Zakat Calc helps Muslims to calculate Zakat types: Gold, silver, stones, jewels, savings in bank, property, loans, business, firms, animanls (2.5%) and agriculture (10%). Zakat Calc is included in Sabily, a free, open source operating system designed by and for Muslims.

This project is for the OS Sabily. To calculate the amount of the payment of zakat. Used for educational purpose and public use. This project is free. It was created using the Gambas programming language and it runs on GNU/Linux.

Zakat or "alms giving" is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, is the giving of 2.5% of one's possessions (surplus wealth) to charity, generally to the poor and needy.

Gnome Nanny (Parental Control) is an easy way to control how long users or your kids can be on the computer and what they can and can't access browsing the web.

End of Life (EOL) release

Sabily 11.10 is based on Ubuntu 11.10 and was released 19 December 2011, Ubuntu 11.10 has reached its end of life for updates and support. No further updates, including security updates, will be available for Sabily 11.10 and Ubuntu 11.10. Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux distribution and is active. But if the Sabily system isn't updated with a new release in the future, the system may become vulnerable to exploits. Sabily has suffered from lack of resources and had e.g. made a suspension of Sabily 12.04 codename "Ibn-AlBaytar" to name the next release 12.10 "Ibn-AlBaytar". Generally to accelerate the development, more developers, graphical designers, packagers, iso builders must be found. However Ubuntu 13.04 has Islamic software: Zekr Quranic Study Tool, Minbar Islamic prayer times application, Monajat Islamic supplications tray applet, Thwab Arabic/Islamic encyclopedia system, Hijri Islamic Calendar tray applet and Othman Quran browser in the Ubuntu repository. They can be installed using the application Ubuntu Software Center. Zakat Calc is available for Ubuntu as well, but must be downloaded from the Launchpad (website).