@rysiek i wish there was a good alternative to Lightroom that can also seamlessly import existing catalogues ... I'm locked into it, effectively, since I have decades' worth of raw files managed in it. at least I'm on the last "proper" version of it that you could outright buy before it went Creative Cloud leasing model...
@patrick_h_lauke @rysiek Darktable can iirc, you just need to ask Lightroom to create sidecar files and work with those, not just the single catalog file, doesn't seem that difficult.
@darktable themselves might have some rough idea on where to point you for that