[camtarn]

I really like Darktable, and it's my go to photo editor, but the user interface really isn't intuitive on first look compared to something like Lightroom. The design choice that editing modules should be ordered by their place in the pixel pipeline is logical and sometimes useful, but it ends up with a lot of the controls being in rather weird places. The customisable quick controls palette would help, if it weren't that simple things like cropping can't be added to it (at least, last time I investigated this - perhaps it's changed now?)

[zerkten]

I could have been clearer. I wouldn't say it's the paragon of photo editing, but it's further along in terms of usability. I've seen some normal people who don't want to pay the Adobe tax move to it.

An investigation of FOSS development would highlight a bunch of problems that exist to a lesser extent with other software development. When money is on the table and there is no motivation to keep supporting behaviors that particular contributors favor then feedback shift things. When you're building stuff for "yourself" then that feedback doesn't land the same even if the project owner has aspirations for better UX.