[Updated: 18/07/2007]

RecordMyDesktop is a great little utility to... record your desktop. It's command-line driven but don't let that frighten you. All you have to do is type recor <Tab> (to let auto-complete do it's magic) and hit <Enter> to start recording.

Recordings are made in the open standard .ogg format and can also include sound. By default, your entire screen's recorded, but you can change that by specifying a particular screen area to record.

Download this simple example, made to show the effects of wobbly windows -- one of the cool effects from installing Beryl:


Right-click & choose Save to download (933KB)

I only recorded a small area of my screen with the command;

recordmydesktop -x 400 -y 150 -width 600 -height 350 -o wobbly.ogg

-x and -y specify the starting screen coordinates, -width and -height should be obvious, and -o is the name of the output file.

So how did I determine my start coordinates? With the wonderfully useful krule, the on-screen ruler...


Krule: right-click it to change orientation

Then I imported wobbly.ogg into video editor Kino...



...edited it as necessary and exported it to the more common .flv format. (I could have made it an .mpg but I didn't think you'd appreciate a 3.5MB download!)



Updated: 18/07/2007
As commenters Garret and heri point out, I've overlooked RMD's GUI. GTK-recordmydesktop which makes it all blindingly easy. Both utilities are typically part of regular Linux installations, so just pick 'em up through your regular package manager.





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