It's open source, and gives me all the sliders and dials I need.I kind of like both RT as well as Darktable but the abundance of sliders and dials is exactly what I tend to stay away from. I bought into the basic Linux program philosophy: an executable should do one thing only, but do it exceptionally well. This is also the background to what Udi Fuchs, the developer of Ufraw wrote on his website. I really need a raw converter to be just thàt: a tool to convert raw sensor data into an editable image file with only the bare minimum of manipulations: demosaicing, white balance setting, a color curve - I possibly forget one or two little bitty things but that's the gist of it. Editing of that image file is then best left to one of the other rather specialized tools in my kit: digiKam and Gimp (both 16-bit) or even something entirely different such as ImageMagick or GMIC for some really interesting manipulations and mathematical functions designed to either improve an image or apply some sort of effect to it. It definitely IS a matter of taste though, not saying an 'everything but the kitchen sink' approach is wrong, far from it! Just never been one of my favorite ways of working.

Lightzone vs darktable