Wowzers. That’s what I thought when I bumped into Ubuntu Muslim Edition on Wuala; a p2p/storage program. It’s basically a distro on Ubuntu which you can install from 2 cds as a Desktop version (I haven’t seen a Server version yet) on another OS like XP, a computer that doesn’t have any OS, or you can convert it from another version of Ubuntu like Hardy Heron. It features certain programs written for an OS with an “Islamic” environment. Some of them include a program for online Quran recition from versebyversequran.com, alot of nice quality Islamic/Ubuntu artwork, a Quran study tool, a program called Monajat that acts as a popup that alerts you to when it’s prayer time, a firefox addon that shows the prayer times and also alerts you to them (I haven’t installed it yet, so I don’t know if it’s the fzami prayer time addon which lots of people use), lots of multimedia support, quite a few educational games for the kids, the usual goodies that come with every nice Ubuntu; Java, an archiver/unarchiver for zip files, skype, Ubuntu Tweak, Glub and Splash screen utility programs and host of other useful things. It also has a web content control tool to filter out inappropriate sites. Also, it includes an Arabic translation of the whole OS in Arabic with other features such as an Arabic Firefox.

All in all, two thumbs up to the Ubuntu Muslim Edition team. You can visit them at their site. They also have a Google Group for updates and support, although there seems to be a little spam. I also noticed that brother Chaidir did a peice in Malaya-I think-on integrating Ubuntu ME with Mac4Linux. Jun Auza also did a review on Ubuntu ME, except from a Christian’s perspective.

In the meanwhile, check out some of the screenshots:

More can be found here.