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Using purely Linux and getting deeper into photography I was looking for an application to manage my collection of raws and to develop them. After starting of with RawTherapee and having a short try with digikam I soon switched over to darktable. And I can say I never regretted it.
Out of my view it is a professional grade software, and beginners are advised to read the very comprehensive manual carefully while starting off with it. The manual is also a good source of reference. In addition there are many helpful video tutorials.
The developers put a big thought in image manipulating quality and often there is some serious science behind it. They for sure know their stuff, providing the best tools and algorithms for the task. The photo database management capabilities on the other hand still show some room for improvement. In general although the software is mature and ready to use there are regular releases with new features.
To summarize, darktable is a great tool to manage and develop your raw images in excellent quality. The learning curve gets easier by consulting the manual.

For my favorite raw managing and editing software darktable, exiv2 is a very important library. While exiv2 does its work mainly unnoticed under the hood, it is a corner stone in the process. Additionally once in while I fire up exiv2 on the command line to examine some meta data in a photo.
The program works flawless and providing sample data gaps in the recognition of meta data are happily closed by the developers.
I'd like to thank all the devs for their work on this often not seen but very important piece of software.

For my favorite raw managing and editing software darktable, Rawspeed is a very important library. While it does its work mainly unnoticed under the hood, it is a corner stone in the process of actually reading the image data.
I'd like to thank all the devs for their work on this often not seen but very important piece of software.

For my favorite raw managing and editing software darktable, LensFun is a very important library. While the lib does its work mainly unnoticed tightly integrated in darktable, I basically use it in every photo I develop to correct the lens errors.
The program works flawless and developers actually provide an easy to use service to add missing data to the database providing sample photos if you cannot conduct the process yourself.
I'd like to thank all the devs for their work on this often not seen but very important image manipulation software.