Gnome is sorely lacking in any truly viable photo management system, with the exception of Darktable .

I believe that as Darktable matures it will be come the de facto  program in gnome  for photographic workflow. I suggest that you check out Pascal de Bruijn’s blog, especially the video overview. they are on 0.6 rc currently, at the current rate of development they’ll be on version 1.0 in no time.

I’m no fan of the KDE desktop its just to unwieldy for me. however the only fully mature product out there for Linux users is DigiKam.

DigiKam is the Best Photo management program for dealing with extensive tagging and metadata editing , its general photo editing tools still need some work  to be on a par with Darktable or even GIMP. DigiKam  is constantly improving and really gets better all the time. watch for   non destructive editing in its next major release.

 ”darktable is a virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers: it manages your digital negatives in a database and lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable. it also enables you to develop raw images and enhance them. 

This project tries to fill the gap between the many excellent existing free raw converters and image management tools (such as ufraw or f-spot). 

The user interface is built around efficient caching of image metadata and mipmaps, all stored in a database. the user will always be able to interact, even if the full resolution image is not yet loaded. 

 All editing is fully non-destructive and only operates on cached image buffers for display. the full image is only converted during export.  

The frontend is written in gtk+/cairo, the database uses sqlite3, raw image loading is done using libraw, high-dynamic range, and standard image formats such as jpeg are also supported. the core operates completely on floating point values, so darktable can not only be used for photography but also for scientifically acquired images or output of renderers (high dynamic range). 

 darktable is released under the terms of the or later.”

I loaded a directory with 135 CR2 raws and 1 DNG , it was surprisingly and delightfully quick. 

In order to learn how to use this application you’ll need to look at page 5 Documentation on the website,

http://darktable.sourceforge.net/news.shtml

It  responded in a reasonable fashion to its editing chores, This looks to the the future application of choice for RAW workflow.

The current list of features

• • fully non-destructive editing.
  • core functions operate on 3×32-bit floating point pixel buffers.
  • modular, extensible image operations (plug-in interface).
  • flexible data base queries, search by tags, simple tagging by related tags.
  • image rating (stars), filtering and sorting within the base query.
  • import a variety of standard, raw, and high dynamic range image formats (e.g. jpg, cr2, hdr, pfm, .. ).
  • zero-latency user interface through multi-level software caches.
  • fullscreen, zoomable user interface.
  • color-managed image operations in L*a*b* and profiled rgb: rotate/crop, color correction, input/output/display color profile management, edge-avoiding wavelet domain editing (e.g. edge-aware denoise, ringing-free sharpen), exposure controls, flexible color zone mapper (e.g. make all colors except red monochrome, imitate polarizing filter, etc.), lens defect correction (lensfun), color filter based monochrome conversion, unsharp mask sharpen, white balancing, tone curve, and base curve.
  • built-in icc profile support: srgb, adobe rgb, and linear rgb.
  • export to low dynamic range (jpg, png, tiff), 16-bit (ppm, tiff), or linear high dynamic range (pfm).
  • exif data read using libexiv2.
  • automatic image re-import if it was written (inotify).
  • runs on gnu linux/gnome and mac osx/macports.
  • translations available in English, French, Russian, and Swedish.

upcoming features  listed 

• more powerful export system, with modules connecting to web collections.
• tethered shooting.
• tonemapping for hdr input.
• artistic image postprocessing: vignetting and grain simulation.

I definately give this one a 4/5 star rating.

I’ve  revised my Linux set up to Kubuntu 10.04 LTS to take full advantage of Digikam and Showfoto. Digikam, and Showfoto are reasonably good programs.  I’ve not found them to be any slower than many commercial offerings, and they have a few nice features.

An advantage is that when installing Digikam, a DNG converter is installed as well. Showfoto will handle CR2 RAW photos much quicker than F-spot. Neither Shotwell or Gwenview will handle RAW.

Gnome unfortunately requires that you use several programs, some not in the repositories, to accomplish what you can do in Showfoto and Digikam.

The best commercial product available in Linux which competes with Aperture © and Lightroom © is Bibble 5.1 ©.

Bibble version 5.1c seems to be more stable on the KDE desktop than the GTK (Gnome) desktop. Perfectly clear, noise ninja, and the speed enhancements make Bibble a very viable competitor.

Micro Stock

In a discussion I had with my brothers it was mentioned that Getty Images had acquired some of the web stock photo sites ,Stock.xchng and Istockphoto  , Getty’s  TOS are horrible.

These are not recommended sites for those starting out.

The microstock sites , FeaturePics or Fotolia are both worth checking out. The pay for your royalty free stock is decent and you can work your way into rights managed photos.