You've more or less outlined what programs like Lightroom, DigiKam, and Darktable do. The integration with e.g. LR or DT gets you thumbnails rendered with what

You've more or less outlined what programs like Lightroom, DigiKam, and Darktable do. The integration with e.g. LR or DT gets you thumbnails rendered with whatever processing needs to be applied. As I'm typically using whatever to copy images off of a phone or an external memory dongle I don't mind adding things to a catalog. The import process copies the files memory dongle and into folders organized by capture date. Certainly (for me) it's easier to hit a couple buttons in LR than it is to copy everything over manually. You can also set LR to automatically import pictures. If you really are just allergic to importing photos, in the proprietary world Adobe Bridge can be used to go through your photos in a manner you've described. You can also quite a bit of management from the import screen in LR without having to actually import photos into a collection.