Kdenlive?
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
56 points (93.8% liked)
Linux
12268 readers
373 users here now
A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)
Also, check out:
Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I have experience with many editors from windows and macOS. After switching to Linux I had to find an alternative. I have been using kdenlive. I never needed a tutorial, always figured things out. Very impressive editor. I was able to have 1TB of footage on the time line, and able to make 1 million x speed time lapse using over 60 hours of footage on a laptop. Very impressed by this software!
@Retro_unlimited @Lemmchen This is one of the big things about #foss: there is no cause for restrictions, other than what the hardware can provide. None of this, 'Buy the Pro version to make a longer movie' nonsense. If the software breaks your machine, you get to keep both parts and the author is not liable!
For me, I found Kdenlive decently intuitive (at least in comparison to "professional" options like davinci resolve. I haven't ever video edited much and I was able to pick up easily without watching any video tutorials). You add video and audio clips, drag them into the timeline, and use the split tool for cutting. Then you can drag the edge of clips to adjust the length, and you drag an effect from the effects menu. One effect I like to use is the "Freeze" one, so I can freeze a frame of a video for a bit. Pretty neat.
Also, on Kdenlive, you can disable most of the windows that you don't require which is pretty neat.
https://flathub.org/en/apps/org.pitivi.Pitivi (there is still active development on their git, but for some reason the release is quite old)
OpenShot is great, especially paired with Inkscape and Blender. It's simple and elegant and an old like me can be productive with minimal training.
There's also Kdenlive, for your super fully featured needs.
kdenlive and openshot are my choice. openshot is easier for basic stuff but kinda buggy (at least it was in 2023)
Openshot looks pleasing to the eye and seems easy to use but I didn't use it myself
Shotcut is in my opinion easy to use but is more similar to davinci resolve than to WMM
Good to know, Davinci is awesome!
You may want to look into Avidemux as it's trying to be a simple video editor. But it may too basic and I'm not certain, if it will be intuitive to you.
I only used Window Movie Maker in the 2010s, maybe it used to be better before. But in my experience it was much more cumbersome. I think it was intuitive in the sense that it mostly worked like Microsoft (Office) software, but other than that it still did require some learning effort.
A lot of people sleep on avidemux, but if all you need is cutting and appending this program could save you a ton of time (and maintain the original quality) since it doesn't need to render or encode
But OP did mention a blur effect
Ahhh right. Seems like you can only apply the blur filter to the entire video.
Does it need to be free software or just work on Linux? In recent years several web-based video editors became popular such as CapCut and Microsoft Clipchamp. They come with the usual disclaimers of being by companies that don't have your best interest at heart.
Personally, I try to power through Kdenlive and look up tutorials for the little stuff I do.
Edit: https://opencut.app/ but may require running it inside a local Docker container yourself for most stability.
I'd definitely prefer something FLOSS and local, albeit selfhosted in my network.