Darktable seems to be very convoluted as far as accessing pictures go. I miss Raw Studio, but it seems to be no longer available in Mint 18. In Raw Studio you could just double click any raw file, and it would automatically use that folder and show all the other pics and you could start to work on them.

In Darktable I find it acts really finicky, like you try to click on anything and it won't respond. You click on "import" to import a folder, but nothing happens. Have to keep closing out of it and reopening and eventually it might import some of the pictures, but then it also imports old pictures you were working on before, it's weird. Any way to make it less finicky? Basically I just want it to open all the pictures in a temp folder I work from. I move the pictures there from my camera to work on them then delete them after. So I just want to start a new set each time. It's also very hard to exit from the program, often have to force quit.

Actually right now it seems to be acting way more finnicky than usual. I can't even click on most options, nothing happens. Like after a while I finally managed to get the import dialog to show up, but I can't click out of the default path. I click on the path and it won't do anything. Like I should be able to click on home and it should move up 1 folder but it does nothing. I can't even click on files.

Hi Red! I don't have a deep understanding of what's wrong in your installation, but I can shed some light on the likely cause of your problems. I have been using darktable for a couple of years, and I'm not really happy with how they decided to keep track of images, but I understand why they do things the way they do.

Because darktable is non-destructive, meaning they never touch the original image file except to read it, they have to store all your edits somewhere, and tightly link them to the right image. You've seen the "sidecar" files, of course, but for some reason only part of the information goes there. There is also a (sqlite?) database which darktable uses to store information about image edits. When you do succeed at importing an image, darktable makes a record of that in the database, using the path to the image as a link. So, if you move the image using the operating system (like I want to do), it breaks the link in the database. They actually have a mechanism inside darktable that is intended to be used when you want to relocate images, so that the database links can be preserved. Although I try not to use it, I probably should, and I think your life would be easier if you do too.

Has darktable ever shown your icons of a skull in the light table view when you open it? Those represent an image that exists in the database, but can't be found on disk.

There have been threads on the darktable mailing list that discussed issues related to moving images after editing them. I believe the best course for you at this point might be to completely uninstall darktable, make sure that the database is gone (/home/<user>/.config/darktable/library.db) and reinstall. If you preserve all your sidecar files, you should have essentially all of your current edit information for your images. You might consider asking your question by following the instructions on the darktable website:
"for all concerns of a darktable user: usage questions, experience reports...
posts are made by subscribers only, subscribe via email to darktable-user+subscribe@lists.darktable.org". This mailing list is quite active, and the folks there are positive and helpful.

Good luck!

edited to add: Forgot to follow through above, but I think your database may be so full of broken links now that the user interface is unable to cope. Just an uninformed guess...

Is there a way to relocate this DB, to say, a ram drive, or other location I can just script to delete? Basically, I don't want it to remember anything (as far as imported pics) once I close the program. Sometimes I literally just need 1 picture out of the camera and don't want to have to deal with any kind of library. I just want to double click the file, edit it, export to jpeg using my predefined settings and that's it. Other times I might have pictures from a trip or event or something so I do want to edit a lot. Bottom line is once I'm done with the editing I don't care about the raw files anymore and I don't want the program to care either. If I decide I do want to rework on them then I just want to open them again. ex: I don't want any kind of permanent library.

I guess I can maybe get in the habit of always removing all the pics when I'm done before I close the program.

Some of the weird unresponsiveness seems to have been fixed after a reboot. I was having a bunch of weird unrelated issues so decided to see if a reboot would fix everything and it did.

looks like you should RTFM or find the project on GIT and try to email them. i hate signing up for lists and bug DB though. tons of mail and sometimes after all the bother no answer

Yeah I don't get why mail list are even a thing, a forum is much more organized and easier to manage. And yeah guess I'll try to google for an answer and see if there is a way to do what I need.

>> Is there a way to relocate this DB, to say, a ram drive, or other location I can just script to delete? <<

Well, when I'm tired of things that aren't working "right", I've been known to take some pretty direct action. Sometimes I get to what I'm trying to accomplish, other times it turns into a learning experience.

If you really don't want any lingering memory of your editing session, go ahead and delete the database when you're done and see what happens. If you want this to be the normal behavior on your system, you could make a nice bash script that does this for you, and call it to start the program. I'm not recommending this, but it is certainly a possible approach. Or, you could ask on the darktable mailing list and get answers from folks who know a whole lot more about it than I do. Just sayin'.