I searched for hours on-line and finally found a recent tutorial on how to create linux screencasts. This guy uses something called "recordmydesktop" and "kdenlive" to polish it up.
Very helpful. Looks like it should be the ticket. Perhaps more interesting was the kdenlive project. I wasn't aware of it previously. I'll still most likely use final cut on another laptop for polish, but I'll give it a try and thank you kindly for pointing me in the right direction.