I would like to record my desktop screen. Maybe a portion of it not the entirety of the screen. Then convert that into an animated GIF image. Would like to use less or none at all on image editing software where possible. What are the tools I will use in a Linux desktop?
ANSWER
My go to tools for this are Kazam and Gifcurry.
Kazam for screen recording my desktop. It is a simple tool. Has options to target fullscreen can include all screens, a window or an area on the desktop. The latter may be exactly what you need. The results are saved into a MP4 file.
Gifcurry can then load that video file, make edits, save it into animated gif.
I can also skip Gifcurry. Use ffmpeg directly instead. It can do a lot of things to handle video, audio, other media files and streams. But a simple command such as this one will do for starters:
ffmpeg -i video-file.mp4 -f gif output.gif