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Does anything else even come close?

Lots of programs that "come close", but why settle for contenders when you can back the Champion? DigiKam

I use DigiKam to manage my photos. It's not as comprehensive in editing capabilities as Lightroom, but it's always undergoing improvement. And I'm not stuck paying out the rear for features I don't need anyway.

Open Source ftw!

https://www.digikam.org/

https://www.digikam.org/about/

"What is digiKam?

digiKam is an advanced open-source digital photo management application that runs on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. The application provides a comprehensive set of tools for importing, managing, editing, and sharing photos and raw files."

"Highlights

You can use digiKam's import capabilities to easily transfer photos, raw files, and videos directly from your camera and external storage devices (SD cards, USB disks, etc.). The application allows you to configure import settings and rules that process and organize imported items on-the-fly.

digiKam organizes photos, raw files, and videos into albums. But the application also features powerful tagging tools that allow you to assign tags, ratings, and labels to photos and raw files. You can then use filtering functionality to quickly find items that match specific criteria.

In addition to filtering functionality, digiKam features powerful searching capabilities that let you search the photo library by a wide range of criteria. You can search photos by tags, labels, rating, data, location, and even specific EXIF, IPTC, or XMP metadata. You can also combine several criteria for more advanced searches. digiKam rely on Exiv2 library to handle metadata tag contents from files to populate the photo library.

digiKam can handle raw files, and the application uses the excellent LibRaw library for decoding raw files. The library is actively maintained and regularly updated to include support for the latest camera models.

The application provides a comprehensive set of editing tools. This includes basic tools for adjusting colors, cropping, and sharpening as well as advanced tools for, curves adjustment, panorama stitching, and much more. A special tool based on lensfun library permit to apply lens corrections automatically on images.

Extended functionality in digiKam is implemented via a set of plugins. You can easily customize digiKam by enable and disable individual tools, dedicated especially to import and export contents to remote web-services."

Digikam can export to and import from Google Photos. It's not so automatic as Picassa's folder sync, but it works pretty well.

Digikam has been able to do it for quite a while, though the UI's been somewhat dodgy in the past. It's getting better. So be sure to get a recent version (Ubuntu, for example, tends to have a pathetically old version in its repositories.)

I think you meant digiKam, not digicam?

digiKam, free, runs on the major platforms, has the feature you've asked for and all the features you haven't asked for but, based on my experience, you will need.

Quoting from:-

A digiKam Overview

digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for KDE, which makes importing and organizing digital photos a "snap". The photos are organized in albums which can be sorted chronologically, by folder layout or by custom collections.

Tired of the folder constraints? Don’t worry, digiKam also provides tagging. You tag your images which can be spread out across multiple folders, and digiKam provides fast and intuitive ways to browse these tagged images. You can also add comments to your images. digiKam makes use of a fast and robust database to store these meta-informations which makes adding and editing of comments and tags very reliable.

digiKam makes use of KIPI plugins for lots of added functionalities. KIPI (KDE Image Plugin Interface) is an initiative to create a common plugin infrastructure for digiKam, KPhotoAlbum, and GwenView. Its aim is to allow development of image plugins which can be shared among KDE graphical applications.

An easy-to-use interface is provided that enables you to connect to your camera and preview, download and/or delete your images. Basic auto-transformations can be deployed on the fly during image downloading.

Another tool, which most artists and photographers will be familiar with, is a Light Table. This tool assists artists and photographers with reviewing their work ensuring the highest quality only. A classical light table will show the artist the place on the images to touch up. Well in digiKam, the light table function provides the user a similar experience. You can import a photo, drag it onto the light table, and touch up only the areas that need it.

Note: it's not very stable if you insist on running it on Windoof. Very reliable on Linux, I haven't tried with OSX.

Features

digiKam, free, runs on the major platforms, has the feature you've asked for and all the features you haven't asked for but, based on my experience, you will need.

Quoting from:-

A digiKam Overview

digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for KDE, which makes importing and organizing digital photos a "snap". The photos are organized in albums which can be sorted chronologically, by folder layout or by custom collections.

Tired of the folder constraints? Don’t worry, digiKam also provides tagging. You tag your images which can be spread out across multiple folders, and digiKam provides fast and intuitive ways to browse these tagged images. You can also add comments to your images. digiKam makes use of a fast and robust database to store these meta-informations which makes adding and editing of comments and tags very reliable.

digiKam makes use of KIPI plugins for lots of added functionalities. KIPI (KDE Image Plugin Interface) is an initiative to create a common plugin infrastructure for digiKam, KPhotoAlbum, and GwenView. Its aim is to allow development of image plugins which can be shared among KDE graphical applications.

An easy-to-use interface is provided that enables you to connect to your camera and preview, download and/or delete your images. Basic auto-transformations can be deployed on the fly during image downloading.

Another tool, which most artists and photographers will be familiar with, is a Light Table. This tool assists artists and photographers with reviewing their work ensuring the highest quality only. A classical light table will show the artist the place on the images to touch up. Well in digiKam, the light table function provides the user a similar experience. You can import a photo, drag it onto the light table, and touch up only the areas that need it.

Note: it's not very stable if you insist on running it on Windoof. Very reliable on Linux, I haven't tried with OSX.

Features

digiKam, free, runs on the major platforms, has the feature you've asked for and all the features you haven't asked for but, based on my experience, you will need.

Quoting from:-

A digiKam Overview

digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for KDE, which makes importing and organizing digital photos a "snap". The photos are organized in albums which can be sorted chronologically, by folder layout or by custom collections.

Tired of the folder constraints? Don’t worry, digiKam also provides tagging. You tag your images which can be spread out across multiple folders, and digiKam provides fast and intuitive ways to browse these tagged images. You can also add comments to your images. digiKam makes use of a fast and robust database to store these meta-informations which makes adding and editing of comments and tags very reliable.

digiKam makes use of KIPI plugins for lots of added functionalities. KIPI (KDE Image Plugin Interface) is an initiative to create a common plugin infrastructure for digiKam, KPhotoAlbum, and GwenView. Its aim is to allow development of image plugins which can be shared among KDE graphical applications.

An easy-to-use interface is provided that enables you to connect to your camera and preview, download and/or delete your images. Basic auto-transformations can be deployed on the fly during image downloading.

Another tool, which most artists and photographers will be familiar with, is a Light Table. This tool assists artists and photographers with reviewing their work ensuring the highest quality only. A classical light table will show the artist the place on the images to touch up. Well in digiKam, the light table function provides the user a similar experience. You can import a photo, drag it onto the light table, and touch up only the areas that need it.

Note: it's not very stable if you insist on running it on Windoof. Very reliable on Linux, I haven't tried with OSX.

Features

In the Gimp, fixing the white balance is a manual process using curves, but in Lightroom, you just point at a neutral color in the photo and it's all done for you.

Colors, Levels..., Pick gray point. Same sort of thing. The only problem is that it expects this to be the 50% grey point, so you may still have to shift things around a little afterward. I agree that this is something The GIMP could do better (there's scripts that may be of interest there.
Another problem is that most people don't look beyond the 'automatic white balance' option in The GIMP.. which is truly awful and shouldn't even be there.

I won't contest the graduated neutral density filter because you're right - that's more involved in The GIMP. Again, something that could probably be fixed with a simple script or just accepting that it takes a bit more work but ultimately offers more flexibility.

These are two basic photo post-processing tasks that Lightroom is better at, true. Then again, Lightroom is better at that than Photoshop, too. You then go on to talk about the cataloging and batch features (GIMP can do batch, but let's not get into that), which similarly are not generally features of a photo editing tool but rather something like, say, Picasa (I'm sure there's a FLOSS 'equivalent').

Basically, The GIMP is not the tool for the job, and I'm glad you have realized that. Perhaps it can become that tool given a few tweaks, but I'm not sure that's its goal.

What you might be looking for - and I honestly wouldn't know for sure as I have only used darktable in a limited fashion and your use cases may not be at all similar to mine - are tools like DigiKam, DarkTable and RawTherapee.
http://www.darktable.org/
http://www.digikam.org/
http://rawtherapee.com/
There's probably others, these are the ones I'm aware of as they deal with RAW files - which The GIMP can't handle those quite as well as anybody would like.

That said, since you already splurged for Lightroom - or hoisted a flag - you might as well keep using that. It's an excellent piece of software. ( Still, can't hurt to at least try the alternatives. )

Could they make it work for the 5% of sketches that aren't boobs or dongs?

This feature already exists in Digikam, from KDE:
http://digikam.org/

Interestingly, the feature works fine for things that aren't boobs or dongs, because boobs need circles and dongs need straight lines. It fails on normal geometric shapes, but works great on more abstract drawings.

Two awesome photo management apps that fit almost any workflow with a very clean, intuitive interface. Gwenview is a lighter program that's very easy to use and Digikam is a more professional one with some very advanced features.

If you're a Windows user - get Picasa.

If you're a Mac user - iPhoto works great.

If you're a Linux/BSD user - teach her about tar.

Don't you think Digikam (which can upload to Facebook, and download entire albums from Facebook) would be a more appropriate suggestion for Linux/BSD users?

You could simply use it as a desktop. Linux has grown leaps and leaps and leaps forward and in many ways ahead of the Mac as a desktop, so read on.

KDE SC 4.5 (about to be released in a few days/weeks) is leaps ahead of the Mac OS X 10.5 GUI. The only catch is that it is not minimalistic. If you want minimalism you have to pick Gnome with Gnome DO and set it to act like a docky. Put a Mac OS X wallpaper in place and install a Mac OS X theme. However KDE has focussed on more minimalism since KDE4 without sacrificing features.

There is a KDE application for video editing that is unparalleled: Kdenlive: http://www.kdenlive.org/
It slaughters Sony Vegas in functionality and is free of charge too. It may not be stable enough yet (version 0.7) so it might be a little bit of a bumpy ride at first.

There is also a kick-ass music management application: AmaroK: http://amarok.kde.org/
It is compatible with iPods that are not of the latest generation (USB encryption crap)

KDE SC's default webbrowser is Konqueror, which, since KDE SC 4.5 also has WebKit support.
Google's Chrome is now also runnable on Linux.
If you don't like the Google privacy stuff than search for the Iron browser (they took the Chrome's source code and stripped it from any call home functionality)

For managing photo's, use DigiKam: http://www.digikam.org/

Personal information management: KDE PIM

For personal finance: http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-home.html

Office work isn't Linux' best aspect, so you could install OpenOffice.org. It is however the best Office Suit available for the PPC. It doesn't look all that good if your distro of choice hasn't supplied their own KDE4 integration into it.

Now there are a lot of distributions, so what should you pick?
The best and most stable KDE4 distro I have ever tried is Fedora. The default download option is with Gnone so search for a PPC KDE version. Because Fedora core is not using anything that is even remotely patented, you have to go to the RPMFusion website to add Adobe's Flash, MP3 and QuickTime codecs and whatnot: http://rpmfusion.org/RPM%20Fusion

You can see pick your download here: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/12/
The Problem I am seeing here is that the current version of Fedora is 13 and the latest PPC64 builds are for Fedora 12. This leads to a little outdated software (1 year).

Have you tried Digikam? The interface is a bit complex... but if you use ufraw, that shouldn't daunt you. (-: It also supports external editors ("Open with..."), but for most edits I find it's built in editor to be superior and fast (cropping, colour & white balance correction, etc).

They had an early native port back in 2008 - I'm assuming it should be pretty stable by now. (I use Digikam under Linux and am very pleased with it...I've not used Windows in quite some time, but if the native Windows port is anywhere near as good as the Linux version it ought to do what the original poster wants quite nicely.)

http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/378

or digiKam: http://www.digikam.org/ http://windows.kde.org/

Digikam! It can save tags in metadata, it can geotag and it works with large photo collections. I don't know how it works on Win (available via the KDE windows installer) but on GNU+Linux it's great. And it's free (as in speech and as in beer).

exactly. how do you even "manage" images with gimp ?
one of the best choices seems to be digikam - especially with the gallery export

exactly. how do you even "manage" images with gimp ?
one of the best choices seems to be digikam - especially with the gallery export

And how about digiKam http://digikam.org/ what use own implentation of dcraw called kdcraw? Different batch jobs, even multiple different batches are possible and even great kipi-plugins support to export/import to wanted place and the photo management part is just awesome.

Actually Digikam is currently the leading open source raw conversion utility IMHO. My wife is a photographer (does some pay work but mostly play), and she prefers Digikam to lightroom hands down, and uses it all the time. (yes she owns lightroom and doesn't use it)

Gnome is corporately sponsored... Red Hat, Novell and I think even Canonical are contributing resources to GNOME.

On the other hand, although KDE uses Qt as a basis, it's otherwise nearly unsponsored (at least, to the degree of corporations actually contributing to it; Nokia's contributions seem to extend to their licensing of Qt allowing people to use it, and largely end there). Okay, that's a bit of a big "but", yet it does mean that a lot of what gets created really is independent first-rate "products" (although that term only applies if you're assuming a market economy paradigm). Good examples include Lancelot, DigiKam, and hell just Konqueror itself. After all, Konqueror was ported to OSX when Apple wanted their own browser; does that mean the Open Source community sponsored Apple? ;) And don't forget about Samba, and probably tons of other absolutely essential parts of Apple's platform that I'm forgetting.

There's lots of examples like that, actually; the market economy way of doing things is based on money and profits, so corporations contribute that to FOSS projects. Meanwhile, though, FOSS contributes code that's free to use and modify, which often gets baked in as vital parts of corporations. So just because our system puts nearly all the money in the market economy, and thus it's the corporations doing the sponsorship in that sense, doesn't mean the relationship is so simple or that the power relationship is one way!

Simple: I can take my console disc, and put it in a friend's console and play at their house. I can spill pop on my console and watch fire come out the back, and I can go buy another console and put my disc in the new console and play the game. Most importantly, I don't have to ask anyone for permission when I install my console game, so a downed or overwhelmed sever is not going to stop me from playing. In short, I own the console game, whereas I'm "renting" with DRM.

In actual fact, I would draw a distinction between "copy protection", which is designed to stop you from making copies of a game, and "DRM", which by definition is designed to limit the rights you have.

I got Flight Simulator X as a gift from my in-laws two years ago. It comes with a maximum of two product activations. I'm at that limit right now; so if I want to upgrade my computer in any significant way, or reinstall windows, or if my hard drive crashes, then I either have to call up Microsoft and beg them to give me more activations (which I find distasteful), buy a second copy of the game (which I find extremely distasteful), or I have to pirate the game I already own. As a result, I find myself being very careful not to reinstall windows, and I find myself second-guessing hardware upgrades and putting them off.

Ever since I received Flight Simulator X, I have been very careful; I will *never* buy a product with product activation, for any reason. For the most part, this means I miss out on games rather than pirating them, because I only have so much free time. So, no Bioshock, no Mass Effect, nothing from Microsoft. Not playing Spore is going to suck big time, because I've been looking forward to it, but unless they change their minds about the DRM, I'm just not going to touch it.

As a hobbiest photographer, I'd love to pick up Lightroom, since I played with the demo and it's fantastic. I've been putting some serious thought into whether I should buy a Mac and a copy of Aperture. If Adobe got rid of the product activation, it would obviously be a no-brainer. As a professional software developer, it's tempting just to write my own image management software (if I were still in University and had tons of free time, I'd have done it by now); I'm sure there's other people who feel the same as me, so I'm sure Adobe's insistence on DRM is going to net them some open source competition eventually, too. Actually, I take that back. Too late.

To clarify. If you move a photo in digikam to another folder, it will move that file to the corresponding folder on the disk (just as you would expect it to).

The purpose of the database file is (I believe) just to keep track of thumbnail images it creates.

I'm not sure about RAW file support. According to this web page ( http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/344 ), RAW is supported with a standard plugin.

There's also digikam which does a *lot* of things including management, basic editing and raw processing (although I do that last bit in Bibble). It's Qt but will run fine on a Gnome desktop.

What, has no-one mentioned digiKam yet?
What a terrible omission from the review.

Take a look, it's really good.

In practice I found that in virtually all cases the results of the FIR Wiener filter were at least as good as those of unsharp masking. The FIR Wiener filter is frequently better in restoring small details.

Digikam may be what you're looking for.

Just need a good photo management app

Check out digikam

... A single app in 2007. and we're just talking about image browsing.. not something fancy ...

By no means is there a single application that excels for image browsing. Personally, I prefer Gwenview, and don't see how it "sucks completely" at all, but c'est la vie, I suppose. Anyway, there are plenty more that work perfectly well:

DigiKam, F-Spot, et cetera.

... My professors sometimes send out home-work and papers in word or visio ...

I'm a student at USC, and I get homework, papers, and other things that are .doc, .vis, .ppt, et cetera. I also have to send assignments as email attachments, and so I have to make sure that they are compatible. I have never once had a problem switching between MS Office and OpenOffice.org. I do keep a small partition on one of my computers with Windows XP installed, just in case problems ever do crop up, but that isn't a fault of Linux or FLOSS. As you said, the lock-in is purely Microsoft's doing.

... when rendering small fonts it just seems blurry. not as sharp and pretty as in windows ...

That is completely subjective. I don't notice much of a difference between modern fonts in Linux versus Windows TrueType. To each his own.

... Not to mention the horrifying ordeal i had to go through just to set-up my legacy atheros card ...

I can't relate to your wifi issues either. I had a bit of trepidation concerning wireless when I installed Kubuntu 6.10 on my new laptop, just because of all of the horror stories that I've heard about wireless support in Linux. I was pleasantly surprised, though. Kubuntu automagically detected my internal wireless, and the only thing required of me was to type in the WEP key. Wireless support is getting very close to being ubiquitous in most distros now.

I realize that you aren't a troll, and neither am I flaming Vista. On the contrary, I believe that Microsoft has finally done some things right with this version of Windows. UAC, no matter what the Slashbots may think, is a step in the right direction. "Protected Mode" for IE7 is another Good Thing (TM).

Nonetheless, I still believe that the bad outweighs the good. Vista's DRM implementation, WGA and license restrictions, overpricing (in my opinion), the company's continued attempts at lock-in, proprietary code, disdain for open standards, and a host of other reasons keep me away from Windows.

By the way, maybe you should test drive more "user-friendly" distros. Gentoo is great, and Portage rocks - only second to the original FreeBSD Ports system (again, in my opinion), but it doesn't have the "just works" mentality that K/X/Ubuntu, Fedora Core, Mandriva, and yes, even SuSE (for now) possess. That just isn't its MO.

What it all boils down to is the nature of FLOSS, which is evolution - getting better and better over time. We've been witnessing it in Linux for the past fourteen years, and I am nothing but optimistic about the future.

I've had good luck with http://www.digikam.org/

I used to use a simple script to I wrote to create an index.html page from a directory of photos. This worked surprisingly well; but then I discovered digikam, and now I wouldn't look back.

Another promising app for amateur photographers that I use for all my pictures:
http://www.digikam.org/
Version 0.9 beta includes 16 bits color depth.
Debian packages: http://packages.debian.org/experimental/graphics/d igikam
Better than screenshots: four movies showing whet you can do with Digikam. Movie number 1: http://www.digikam.org/?q=node/124

Another promising app for amateur photographers that I use for all my pictures:
http://www.digikam.org/
Version 0.9 beta includes 16 bits color depth.
Debian packages: http://packages.debian.org/experimental/graphics/d igikam
Better than screenshots: four movies showing whet you can do with Digikam. Movie number 1: http://www.digikam.org/?q=node/124

Check out digikam or F-Spot. Both support access to EXIF data, both are free (GPL). Digikam is KDE oriented, and F-Spot is GNOME oriented. Both feature basic photo editing, while F-Spot's tagging and organizing may be a bit stronger. Both support a wide range of memory cards and cameras.

How does picasa fare against f-spot or digikam?

You can praise Google if you want, but I suggest you read the FAQ http://picasa.google.com/linux/faq.html. It's a kludge, and a nasty sounding one, at that. Basically it sounds like they commisioned Codeweavers to hack up a version of Wine which would run Picasa. Whatever they couldn't get working, they disabled.

Here's an abbreviated list of items that they couldn't get functioning properly (gleaned from the FAQ):

- CD burning
- picture importing
- support for movie files
- screensaver functions
- mp3 playback (in screensaver mode) and video compression codecs were both omitted due to licensing issues

Since I'm on a roll, let's not forget that it's not open source.

Now don't get me wrong, I give Google credit for doing it. It's a lot more than most others are doing right now, but as someone else pointed out, you'd probably be better off with Digikam http://www.digikam.org/.

Digikam is way better and GPL:
http://www.digikam.org/?q=image/tid/9

it does:
Tags
Albums
Lots of cool filters like red eye
Auto-rotate
DateView with calendar
TagView a la flickr
MAKERNOTE metadata viewer
EXIF metadata viewer
GPS locator in action
IPTC Metadata Viewer
and:
FlickrExport: export images to a remote Flickr web service.
SimpleviewerExport: export your images in a nice flash movie.
HTMLGallery: export your images to HTML
RawConverter: A raw image converter for digital cameras.
SlideShow: Slideshow with effects ripped out from kslideshow and 3D effects using OpenGL.
MpegEncoder: Create an MPEG slideshow from your images.
PrintWizard: A wizard to print images in various format.
JpegLossLess: Batch process your JPEG images without losing meta information and compression.
CdArchiving: Archive your albums on CD or DVD using K3b.
ScanImages: Scanner management using Kooka.
ScreenshotImages: Snap screen based on KSnapshot and adapted to Kipi.
Calendar: A plugin to create calendars.
SendImages: A plugin to send images by email, allowing resizing and recompressing before sending.
RenameImages: Batch image renamer.
ConvertImages: Batch image converter.
BorderImages: Add border to your images in batch.
FilterImages: Batch image enhancer using digital filters.
ColorImages: Batch image color enhancer.
EffectImages: Batch image transformation effects.
ResizeImages: Batch image resizer.
RecompressImages: Batch image recompressor.
FindDuplicateImages: Find duplicate images in albums.
WallPaper: Set your image as wallpaper.
TimeAdjust: Adjust image file time and date.
GalleryExport: Interface for export images collections to remote Gallery web server.

it also comes with a great and simple yet powerfull image editor:
http://www.digikam.org/?q=image/tid/10
So picasa: We don't need you :-p

Digikam is way better and GPL:
http://www.digikam.org/?q=image/tid/9

it does:
Tags
Albums
Lots of cool filters like red eye
Auto-rotate
DateView with calendar
TagView a la flickr
MAKERNOTE metadata viewer
EXIF metadata viewer
GPS locator in action
IPTC Metadata Viewer
and:
FlickrExport: export images to a remote Flickr web service.
SimpleviewerExport: export your images in a nice flash movie.
HTMLGallery: export your images to HTML
RawConverter: A raw image converter for digital cameras.
SlideShow: Slideshow with effects ripped out from kslideshow and 3D effects using OpenGL.
MpegEncoder: Create an MPEG slideshow from your images.
PrintWizard: A wizard to print images in various format.
JpegLossLess: Batch process your JPEG images without losing meta information and compression.
CdArchiving: Archive your albums on CD or DVD using K3b.
ScanImages: Scanner management using Kooka.
ScreenshotImages: Snap screen based on KSnapshot and adapted to Kipi.
Calendar: A plugin to create calendars.
SendImages: A plugin to send images by email, allowing resizing and recompressing before sending.
RenameImages: Batch image renamer.
ConvertImages: Batch image converter.
BorderImages: Add border to your images in batch.
FilterImages: Batch image enhancer using digital filters.
ColorImages: Batch image color enhancer.
EffectImages: Batch image transformation effects.
ResizeImages: Batch image resizer.
RecompressImages: Batch image recompressor.
FindDuplicateImages: Find duplicate images in albums.
WallPaper: Set your image as wallpaper.
TimeAdjust: Adjust image file time and date.
GalleryExport: Interface for export images collections to remote Gallery web server.

it also comes with a great and simple yet powerfull image editor:
http://www.digikam.org/?q=image/tid/10
So picasa: We don't need you :-p

And while we're at it. There is a free alternative. It has even got all the spiffy KDE features like ioslaves and so on at its hands. Plus all the cameras supported that gphoto2 has.

Digikam.

So far Picassa has been the best free photo management app under Windows I've used so far. But IMHO much better is digikam (http://www.digikam.org/?q=about), but it requires you to run Linux or FreeBSD.

The only program I like more for that purpose is iPhoto, but that isn't available for Windows (obviously).

Have you tried digikam? http://www.digikam.org/

It's for Linux....and rocks the socks :)

Mark Shuttleworth and now Linus Torvalds seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which which many must-have KDE apps. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:

AmaroK music player -- The most feature-rich and polished music player on the Free Software platform.

K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.

DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.

Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc

KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.

Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)

KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)

Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.

Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.

MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).

Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.

Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.

KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):

Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.

QT designer for GUI development

Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.

Good news all round, it would seem. :)

Indeed, here are some must-have KDE apps that are certainly going to help SuSE's popularity as a desktop operating system :
AmaroK music player -- Intuitive, powerful, good-looking music player. Supports transfers to/from iPods and many audio formats.

K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.

DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.

Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc

KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.

Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)

KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)

Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.

Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.

MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).

Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.

Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.

KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):

Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.

QT designer for GUI development

Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.

BKSys environment for a complete replacement of the autotool chain (libtool

I think a lot of Suse customers will not be so pleased.

Of course SUSE customers won't be pleased. There are many must-have desktop apps built on the KDE framework that don't have any good gtk equivalents:

AmaroK music player -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.

DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.

Konqueror File Manager" -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)

Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.

Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.

Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.

KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):

QT designer for GUI development

Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.

BKSys environmentfor a complete replacement of the autotool chain (libtool+automake+autoconf+make) that will make dependency a whole lot more simpler and efficient.

Gnome is way behind KDE with regards to these features. The only reason Redhat's doing so well with Gnome is because they're targeting geeky sysadmins who don't care about having a good-looking desktop. The other 99% of the world does care, and gnome just doesn't fit the bill.

What about using existing Linux tools?

I use digiKam (KDE app) in Linux, and it works great. In fact, it has worked great for the last 2 years. Gnome also has a ptoho software, although it is a fairly newcomer to stable apps.

http://www.digikam.org/Digikam-SPIP/

Peace

At least since Mandrake Linux 10.1, whenever I plug my USB digital camera to my PC, digiKam launches.

digiKam is a digital picture manager, like iPhoto on OS X.
http://www.digikam.org/Digikam-SPIP/

Cheers