When I first started shooting raw I would set my camera to RAW + JPEG. This gave me an image to compare my processing skills to. Now I shoot exclusively in RAW format.
I recommend the photography plan from Adobe. It gets you Lightroom and Photoshop for only about $10 per month. Lightroom is pretty easy to learn and is great for processing lots of raw files quickly. More complex edits can be done with photoshop. There are lots of free youtube.com tutorials for both apps.
I've tried several free photo editors similar to lightroom such as Darkroom and Rawtherapee, but neither one really worked for me like Lightroom. Probably because I've been using Lightroom for so long, but they would be good to try if you want something free.
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