One of my biggest pet peeves with an all linux environment is the serious lack of video editing software.  I had tried Kino, and Cinelerra but Kino was only good to cap vid from my camera, not edit it.  And Cinelerra while somewhat over my head didn't seem happy to me.

I used vlc or mplayer to do quick cuts but that was a pain.

Well finally someone stepped up and delivered.  Pitivi has gotten a HUGE overhaul thanks to some cash and development infusion and is now a very easy to use (and functional) editor/converter.

Give it a spin.  In Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) create a pitivi PPA sources list:

vi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pitivi.list

Add these lines to the empty file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gstreamer-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gstreamer-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Then install via apt, aptitude, synaptic etc.  Ex:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install pitivi

And enjoy!