Linux Digital Photo Management

I've been managing my digital photo collection with command-line tools. I mount the camera

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /media/nikon

, I copy files with

cp

, I name my own directories and subdirectories, and everything has worked well enough. I can see that as my collection grows I'll need a better system, with better annotation, but I really dislike the way gui-interface software spews duplicate files Heaven only knows where. (I'm talking about you, iPhoto.) Yesterday, I started reading and test-driving Linux "photo management software." Here's what I've been reading and experimenting with so far.

• F-Spot: Personal photo management for the Gnome Desktop.
• Introduction to the Digital World from Varp.net. Vijoy and Rachna are a photographer couple working out of South San Jose, in the Bay Area.
• Photos: "so you can find your photos later" from Alex King.
• imgSeek:imgSeek is a photo collection manager and viewer with content-based search and many other features. The query is expressed either as a rough sketch painted by the user or as another image you supply (or an image in your collection).