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Darktable, which I've been using for at least three years now, is certainly a reasonable lightroom replacement. Its initially rough edges have been mostly well rounded now, and some of the more hard-line decisions from the developers (like "no file delete functionality at all") have been sensibly slackened.

Some things I think are still missing from open source photography workflow: adequate support Linux from high-end printer manufacturers (eg. I have a Canon Pixma Pro 1 and I basically have to use it through a shitty Windows VM), and better front-ends for lens distortion calculators.

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I could never get the hang of DarkTable, and instead use rawtherapee.

Mostly I like rawtherapee because it can be pointed at a directory of .CR2/raw files, be used to filter them, convert them, and makes zero attempts to be an image-manager. I don't want to import my images into a collection, or tag them, etc. Instead I use a filesystem hierarchy for that purpose:

    Images/2015/
    Images/2015/10/
    Images/2015/10/15-Helsinki-Sunset

Each of my "event" directories contains RAW, JPG, and thumbs. That in combination with the year/mon/day-title directories lets me find things very easily.

What might one recommend as an introduction to Darktable?

I've transitioned to RAW in the past couple of months, and while I'm starting to develop a workflow, I get occasional surprising (to me) behavior. Is there a nice review of the thinking and backend behind the Darkroom UI?

There's a bunch of resources on the darktable website:

http://www.darktable.org/resources/

The screencasts might be a good place to start, and the user manual is quite comprehensive. Disclaimer: I did some of the screencasts. Riley's course is a more-complete overview, but it's not free.

Also keep in mind that darktable just entered feature freeze for 2.0, should be released around the end of the year.

I've used Epson printers without issues on Linux. Apply the profile and print away.

(Of course Epson has its own issues...)

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