From my daily read of Lifehacker, I noticed a program called “recordMyDesktop” - this would be very useful for someone trying to demonstrate how to do something on a linux computer to a large number of users, for example when trying to make a video manual for a website. Ubuntu users can install recordMyDesktop and gtk-recordMyDesktop with:

sudo apt-get install recordmydesktop gtk-recordmydesktop

Thanks again, Lifehacker!