I’ve decided to proceed using the KDE application digikam. It seems to do everything I want (plus lots more) and is open source and easy to use. It looks like it integrates with various web services, including facebook and flickr, without difficulty. The only disadvantage I can find is that the image editor doesn’t automatically save new versions non-destructively. I think I can live with that.

F-Spot looks like a good basic photo manager, but it lacks some of the advanced features of digiKam and Picasa and my web research seems to suggest that it chokes on large collections of files.

Picasa looks great and includes all the features I expect I could want. Unfortunately, it isn’t open source and that is a deal-breaker for me.

I’m going to give digikam a try for a while and report back what I find out.