Kooha vs OBS Studio

Kooha is a free Linux desktop screen recorder with a minimal interface. It records a full monitor or a selected portion of the screen and can capture microphone audio, desktop audio, or both together. Recordings can be saved as WebM, MP4, GIF, or Matroska files. Users can configure the save location, pointer visibility, frame rate, and recording delay. Kooha requires PipeWire, its GStreamer plugin, and xdg-desktop-portal with a portal backend such as GTK, KDE, or wlroots. Flatpak is officially supported, while third-party packages are not officially supported by the developer. Hardware-accelerated encoding is experimental and disabled by default because of stability and performance concerns. Experimental capture can target a specific window or multiple monitors or windows, with possible flickering and stability issues. The project is licensed under GPL-3.0 and points users to GitHub issues for support.

OBS Studio is free, open-source software for video recording and live streaming on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It captures and mixes video and audio from windows, images, text, browser windows, webcams, and capture cards. Users can arrange unlimited scenes, switch with customizable transitions, and preview scenes and sources in Studio Mode before going live. Multiview can monitor eight scenes. The audio mixer has per-source filters, with VST plugin support, and hotkeys cover many recording and streaming actions. An API, native plugins, and Lua or Python scripts provide ways to extend the software. OBS supports streaming platforms including Twitch and YouTube, and streams connect directly from a user’s computer to the service. It is distributed under GPLv2 and may be used commercially subject to the license terms. The download page lists Windows 10 and 11 support, macOS 13.0 or newer, and Linux distribution through Flathub or an Ubuntu 24.04-or-newer PPA. The listed plan costs nothing, with no watermarks or usage limitations.