If you are looking for descent photo editing software for Linux, you should try the latest digiKam release. The digiKam project has released their Christmas Edition of digiKam, version 1.0.0.

Release notes

General:

• Exif, Makernotes, Iptc, and Xmp metadata tags filtering can be customized in setup config dialog.
• Metadata Template: add support of Contact, Location, and Subjects IPTC information.
• Add support of Author properties to multi-language Captions. User can set an author name for each caption value.
• Add new Batch Queue Manager.
• New tool bar animation banner.
• Fix compilation under MSVC 9.
• New first run assistant.
• New dialog to show Database statistics.
• Add support of wavelets image file format PGF.
• Added support of Metadata Template to set easily image copyright.
• Added support of LightRoom keywords path for interoperability purpose.
• Added Multi-languages support to Caption and Tags right side-bar.
• digiKam use a new database to cache thumbnails instead ~./thumbnails. File format used to store image is PGF (http://www.libpgf.org). PGF is a wavelets based image compression format and give space optimizations.
• Add OpenStreetMap support in Geolocation panels.
• Showfoto, Editor, Preview, LightTable: Thumbbar is now dockable everywhere.
• Complete re-write of Color Management code. Add support of thumbs and preview CM.
• AdvancedRename utility is used throughout digiKam now (AlbumUI, CameraUI and BQM).
• Updated internal LibPGF to 6.09.44.
• Syntax highlighting and history management for AdvancedRename utility.

AlbumGui:

• Icon view is now based on pure Qt4 model/view.
• New overlay button over icon view items to perform lossless rotations.
• Find Duplicates search can be limited to an album and tag range.

ImageEditor

• Close tools by pressing ESC.
• New Liquid Rescale tool.
• New menu option to switch image color space quickly.
• Black and White converter: add standard Blue and Yellow-Green color filters.
• New Local Contrast tool to simulate HDR images (Tone Mapping).
• New tool to remove noise using wavelets working in luminance (YCrCb color space).

CameraGUI:

• New history of camera actions processed.

BatchQueueMgr:

• New tool to remove noise using wavelets working in luminance (YCrCb color space).

You can download digiKam 1.0.0 here.