The truth is though - there is no replacement for Lightroom. Digikam has the file management capabilities but the editor experience is clunky (pop out editor, edit modules require opening, no apparent easy sync of settings across images, poor noise control) and it's not the fastest app I've used. Digikam 5 is a big improvement is some ways but the editor is still very clunky to use.
ASP is just buggy. I tried it on Debian Jessie and Ubuntu 16.04 and on both it lasted a few days before simply refusing to open, even after install. It's also slow, even though they claim it's faster. And it does annoying stuff like paint its own window borders to look like a Windows app.
Darktable is the best RAW editor I've used, but it's got essentially zero file management. Batch output requires a new mental abstraction with the 'queue'. For volume work (hundreds of images at a time) it seems ill equipped as you have to create a style or copy the history stack (which doesn't seem to have an easy keyboard shortcut). I'm still working on this one as it has so much power and control it could be fantastic, but more work needs to be done on the process of the edit or you can get stuck in the editors rabbit hole of fine detail.
RAWtherapee - that's the next one to test for me. My initial feature check showed it suffers some of the complaints of Darktable like no file management (as far as I can see) and an involved edit process.
If you pair any of the above applications with gThumb you can get some of the file management back in the most LR style I have found, but (infuriatingly) gThumb doesn't seem to display images in subfolders for whatever reason.
My conclusions so far (as a former pro photographer) is that there is potential in the linux world to equal and even do better that LR but it's definitely not there yet and definitely not in one programme.
And let's not start talking about Photoshop/GIMP - which of course ISN'T photoshop, as they keep telling us.
ASP is just buggy. I tried it on Debian Jessie and Ubuntu 16.04 and on both it lasted a few days before simply refusing to open, even after install. It's also slow, even though they claim it's faster. And it does annoying stuff like paint its own window borders to look like a Windows app.
Darktable is the best RAW editor I've used, but it's got essentially zero file management. Batch output requires a new mental abstraction with the 'queue'. For volume work (hundreds of images at a time) it seems ill equipped as you have to create a style or copy the history stack (which doesn't seem to have an easy keyboard shortcut). I'm still working on this one as it has so much power and control it could be fantastic, but more work needs to be done on the process of the edit or you can get stuck in the editors rabbit hole of fine detail.
RAWtherapee - that's the next one to test for me. My initial feature check showed it suffers some of the complaints of Darktable like no file management (as far as I can see) and an involved edit process.
If you pair any of the above applications with gThumb you can get some of the file management back in the most LR style I have found, but (infuriatingly) gThumb doesn't seem to display images in subfolders for whatever reason.
My conclusions so far (as a former pro photographer) is that there is potential in the linux world to equal and even do better that LR but it's definitely not there yet and definitely not in one programme.
And let's not start talking about Photoshop/GIMP - which of course ISN'T photoshop, as they keep telling us.