Is there a free Lightroom alternative for Linux?

Yes. Adobe makes no Lightroom for Linux, and Litria is a free RAW editor and photo library that runs there. Download the AppImage for 64-bit Intel and AMD machines from the download section, make it executable and open it. Editing is free and needs no account.

What you get

• A RAW editor. Light, Curves, Color with a Color Mixer and Color Grading wheels, Detail, Effects, crop, masks, presets and .cube LUTs, with a live histogram.
• A library for culling. Ratings, Favorite and Reject from the keyboard, bursts grouped into stacks, filters and albums.
• Your folders, as they are. Litria reads the photos where they sit on disk. There is no import step, and it never moves, renames or overwrites a photo.
• Offline work. The app needs no connection to edit. It checks for an update when it opens, downloads it in the background, and says Update ready · Restart.

It develops DNG, ARW, NEF, CR2, CR3, RAF, RW2, ORF and PEF files, and edits JPEG, PNG and WebP.

Without installing anything

Litria also runs in Chrome or Edge on Linux, at litria.app/photos. It is the same editor. Firefox works too, but it cannot keep a folder open, so you pick it again on each visit. The desktop app keeps its own storage, so edits made in the app stay in the app and edits made in the browser stay in the browser.

The other free options on Linux

darktable and RawTherapee are free, open source and mature, with more tools than Litria and a steeper learning curve. digiKam is a strong library with lighter editing. Litria is newer and smaller, puts the editor, the library and publishing in one place, and aims to be easy to pick up. Our Lightroom comparison goes into more detail.

Where it falls short today

• Only the nine RAW formats above.
• The AppImage is for x86-64. There is no ARM build, and no Flatpak, Snap or distribution package.
• No layers. Litria develops photos and does not composite them.

Try it

Download the AppImage, or open Litria in your browser first.