Seems to be the best RAW work flow i have tried on Linux so far. previously i had mostly been using f-spot (in viewer mode) to view them, nautilus to delete useless photos, and UFRAW to develop.
I dreamed of f-spot with a UFRAW style adjuster built in, and proper management of the RAW and developed files.
I have also tried rawstudio, but it gave poor colours unless i adjusted the default value of sliders in the source code. and then gave different lightness and contrast on the output.
Hopefully RawTherapee will be successful in building an opensource community.