Finally Ditched Windows!

For what feels like forever, I’ve been stuck with a Windows installation hanging around for basically one reason - Adobe. Yep, the same thing that keeps so many people tethered to Windows was keeping me there too. In my case, it was Adobe Lightroom.

Don’t get me wrong - Lightroom is fantastic. It does exactly what it says on the tin and does it beautifully. Every other photo management tool I’ve tried over the years felt like it was just trying to be Lightroom but missing something critical. But keeping an entire OS around just for one program was driving me nuts.

The thing is, my photo workflow isn’t particularly fancy. I’m not creating composite images of dragons attacking cities or anything. I just need something that can:

1. Keep track of thousands of photos without losing them
2. Let me sort through and tag the good ones
3. Make some basic edits (mostly tweaking contrast curves and fixing exposure)

I don’t even touch Photoshop, so I wasn’t deeply locked into the Adobe ecosystem.

The Solution I Cobbled Together

After a bunch of experimenting, I’ve landed on a two-program approach that actually works pretty well for me on Linux. For managing my photo library, I’m using DigiKam. It’s not as slick as Lightroom’s interface, but it handles the organizational part surprisingly well - I can pull in images from different locations, create albums, tag stuff, and rate photos. The killer feature for me was how it handles offline libraries - I can disconnect external drives and reconnect them later without everything falling apart.

DigiKam’s editing tools are… well… let’s just say “functional but uninspiring.” This is where RawTherapee comes in. It’s a dedicated RAW editor that has way more adjustments than I’ll probably ever use, but it handles all the basic editing stuff I need. The two programs talk to each other with round-trip editing, so I can stay organized in DigiKam but do the actual editing in RawTherapee.

A Few Annoying Quirks

I’m not gonna lie - there are some workflow hiccups I’m still getting used to. The biggest one is how edits are handled. In Lightroom, everything was non-destructive - I could tweak a RAW file all day, and the edits were just stored as instructions rather than changing the original. With my new setup, DigiKam shows the RAW file with its embedded preview, but any edits get exported as separate JPEG or TIFF files in the same folder.

This means I’m using more storage and ending up with duplicate versions of images. But honestly? Storage is cheap, and it’s a small price to pay for finally being Windows-free. Photography is a storage hog anyway - what’s a few more gigabytes between friends?

Final Thoughts

Will this setup stick? I’m not sure yet. I’m still figuring out some of the finer points of both programs, and I’m hoping there are better ways to handle the edit workflow that I just haven’t discovered yet.

But I’m actually pretty satisfied so far. There’s something deeply satisfying about finally cutting that last tie to Windows. And hey, I’m saving the Adobe subscription fee too, though that was never really my main concern - Lightroom is worth what they charge for it, especially considering how much I use it.

Anyway, if you’re a photographer trying to go full Linux, this combination might be worth checking out!