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I'm not sure if this helps you ditch Microsoft, but as a photographer who refuses to get into the Adobe world for many reasons, I've been very happy with RawTherapee as a replacement for Adobe Lightroom.

http://rawtherapee.com/downloa...

It works natively on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. (I use it on Windows.)

The best introduction to the software seems to be Tony's video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Tony is well known in the photography/tech world, and uses Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom almost exclusively in his workflow (to give you an idea of where he's coming from).

RawTherapee and UFRaw

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. )

Agreed. If you're working with Photoshop and Lightroom, you'll definitely be frustrated. CPU and mem usage may not suffer (although you better have a lot of RAM, I pushed my machine to 4.5GB actual mem usage recently doing an HDR w/PS and LR), but graphics will. Having an actual dedicated card that meets aero glass requirements is a must, and as far as I know, no VM host can do that. You'd get better performance via Wine.

Or you could always switch to the Gimp and Rawstudio and/or RawTherapee under Linux...

That may not be a good assumption to make:

http://www.rawtherapee.com/RAW_Compare/

The author says it is more than a front end:

http://www.rawtherapee.com/?mitem=4&faqid=17

Is RawTherapee an interface for dcraw?

No. RawTherapee uses dcraw only for decoding of the raw files. It is not commonly known, but dcraw is the basis of the decoding engines of almost all raw converter software (including Photoshop, LightZone, RawShooter, etc.).

All the algorithms of the image processing steps (including the demosaicing) are RawTherapee's own methods.

RAWTherapee uses dcraw under the hood.

Changes to the underlying version of dcraw are referenced in the version history on the project website's front page
http://www.rawtherapee.com/

So, if I shoot in raw mode, and then postprocess in software to get a jpeg, the demosaicing signature should merely identify the software, right?

Yes, they're just fingering the in-camera raw conversion to jpeg. Using external conversion changes the game.

There are comparisons of demosaicing algorithms used on the same raw image at several places on the net, such as http://www.rawtherapee.com/RAW_Compare/. The software can make a huge difference, especially regarding moire and related artefacts. Most of the raw converters default to a much too aggressive approach for small scale features, in my opinion. As a result they often create chromatic moire in the JPEG, and accentuate the problem further by sharpening (to hide the softness of typical cheap lenses). This is clearly seen in the examples at the linked site.

Identical detectors on different cameras usually differ in the optical antialias filter used, which can affect their susceptibility to moire on sharpening. This may leave some residual information to allow the camera to be identified even with external conversion of the raw image. It would first be necessary to identify the demosaicing algorithm/software, so identifying the camera just from residual artefacts from the antialias filter would not be easy.

Of course, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the distortion uniquely identifies the lens used...

Raw processing packages such as Bibble Pro also include a database of distortion characteristics for many lenses, including zoom lenses across their zoom range. Optionally, the image processing can compensate for the distortion for any recognized lens. Of course, the removal of distortion may leave a signature, which will perhaps allow both the lens and the software to be identified. This would not be a trivial task, of course, since "identical" lenses differ in their optical characteristics, and probably none exactly matches its nominal profile.

umm, no, there are cheaper cameras. Much cheaper and brand new, from very reputable stores.

well, both LightZone and Raw Therapee support most of their functionality on JPEGs even though both are oriented towards RAW. and I'd put both programs as much superior tools for a photographer than TheGIMP, Photoshop, or ugghh, Elements. Plus, they run on Linux, unlike Aperture and LightRoom.