As succinctly as possible:
Originally posted by Pentaxlover22 What's the real advantage to RAW [compared to jpg]?
With raw, you decide what the sensor data means and with jpg the camera decides.
With RAW you are capturing data and with jpg, you are capturing, to a much greater extent than RAW, a final image.
There is no "advantage" of one over the other only choices. If you want to take sort of a technical-artisan approach and are willing
to invest the time and effort to getting the final image as close as possible to what you want go RAW, Otherwise go jpg.
Only you can decide.
Originally posted by Pentaxlover22 what's the easiest program to use for RAW images?
Not having used all the various RAW programs I don't have a clue. Speaking only for myself I use ACR-Photoshop.