Gifex For Linux

Gifex is a free, open-source, and straightforward desktop GIF recorder for Linux. In short, it's an app that allows you to record specific areas of your desktop/screen in GIF formats.

The main purpose of Gifex is to produce fast and high-quality GIF recordings of prefer desktop areas which can be shared or used in small projects.

It works very similar to most other screen recording apps out there: you select an area of your desktop, and press the "Record" button. Once the recording is completed, you're provided with a nice "Process Recording" window that allows you to choose the preferred frame rate and resolution, preview and trim the recording, rename it, and specify the destination for the end file.

If we were to compare Gifex to most modern screen recorders (even open-source ones), we could argue that there Gifex is not exactly what one might call a feature-packed app. Even though there's no deal-breaker when it comes to features that are lacking or missing, it would have been nice if the app would provide users with a few more options when it comes to recording specific areas.

Another aspect that might not be to everyone's liking is the GUI. While there's nothing wrong with it (in terms of functionality), it does look a bit old, especially on most modern Linux distributions.

The last and probably most important aspect that needs to be discussed is the fact that Gifex is only designed to work with X.org X11. While X11 is still fairly popular in today, its future is not very bright since some of the most popular Linux distros out there have either swapped for other windowing systems or are planning to do so (KDE 6 and GTK 5 are most probably going to drop support for x11 entirely).

In spite of its few drawbacks, Gifex is a decent little app that works like a charm. If all you need is a fast GIF recorder for your desktop, and your Linux distro of choice either runs x11 by default or has an option to run it, then Gifex gets the job done without issues.