When I copy things, I just use Nautilus. I hate software like f-spot (which I assume is what you're referring to), as I can't get to the file system. Most music players also do this.
I understand your reluctance, I resisted this since the first image I loaded off a 5.25" floppy disc onto an amber screen, but in the end it's futile. Aperture allows you to maintain your own directory/file structure, or to let it manage it for you. So it doesn't take away your access to the files. That was the way I used it at first but I realised later I'm not gaining anything from it, and these days I just let it handle the files. I can still find them if I need them. The main reason I use Aperture is for the organisational features. In particular, I like the following:
1. Organising images by projects and albums and folders. And I can mix these three and nest them whichever way I please.
2. Smart albums. This allows me to group certain images into an album based on whatever criteria I define: keywords, size, lens used, apterture/shutter/whatever, how I rated the image, when it was taken, etc. Pretty much anything that can exist in the metadata, can be used. This is incredibly powerful.
3. hierarchical keywording
4. I can add informtation to an image without altering the original file.
There are many more, but suffice to say, it's an incredibly powerful organisational tool. The files are still on my hard drive, and if I want to move to a different app, I can simply take the lot or I can export them into whatever structure you wish.
geeqie, which I mentioned earlier in this thread, is a nice really quick viewer as it loads the embedded jpeg not the whole RAW file. As far as geotagging goes have you looked at this?
http://code.google.com/p/gpicsync/
Nope, I'll check it out. Thanks! The biggest issue I've had with most of the ones I've tried is that they either don't normalise or they're very bad at it. The one I ended up keeping is
GpsPhotoLinker and later their paid version.
I'm not into geotagging, so I can't help further.
I'm bigtime into it. I realised that it's an excellent idea when I was developing 15 year old films and discovered I have no idea where most of the pictures were taken. Same reason I keyword. I have pictures of me and other people, and some don't even look familiar - no idea who they were, but they were clearly important enough for me to want my picture taken with them!
