My Linuxhistory seems to be disturbingly similar to GUBīs, U10.04--->U12.04/Gnome3...
GIMP and Darktable are my choices, GIMP from the beginning and i do, well, i think 99% of editing with it. Yeah, there is a learning curve but heck, if i can learn it...
RAW-editing, well for me itīs limited to cases when i reallyreallybadly need it, and Darktable is intuitive enough to use occasionally. I shoot RAW+, just in case that i have nice frame but somethingīs so wrong that JPEG isnīt enough. After all, space is cheap these days.
Finchj, do you mean the two dedicated windows for tools and the other for, well, dontīt now itīs name in english...? I think the latest version of GIMP has put down (at least optionally) the separated tool-windows.