Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are in good company. I went into Darktable enthusiastically and with willingness to learn its workflow. What I found was crippling bugs and a piss-poor UI. I've even gone back to it after a few years to see if I'd soften my stance, but nope: It blows. Part of my beef with it is discussed below; people are acknowledging that it sucks at organizing (and, I submit, browsing). But it purports to do it, so you waste t…
The lack of easy browsing is an issue, but Darktable has never purported to provide an image browser / organizer. Quite the contrary, the devs have always been crystal clear that they hate the concept with a fiery passion.
The lack of good open-source image browsers has, oddly enough, become a major problem. Only recently did someone float a pretty good one for Mac (FlowVision). I don't know what options there are on other OSes at the moment.