A Digital camera doesn't take a photograph. It records a huge data-table of numbers, for brightness levels across a scene... a 'computer' then takes that data-table and lights up pixels on an electric screen, 'Painting-By-Numbers' a representation 'sort' of like what you saw through the camera.
The File 'Format', be it the common J-peg, or the ubiquitous 'RAW' or any of the many many others, like Tiff, or PSD, are all just different conventions for recording and reading the data file.... some have advantages over others, BUT....... Bottom line is that with any digital camera, its painting-by-numbers. The 'lore' that says 'Shoot RAW!! It's not Lossy! Its everything the camera captures!" IS... well, hugely inflated lore, really... and like the lore, the files made in RAW also tend to be hugely inflated, too.... however.
Back to fundamentals; you point camera at scene, to take picture. That scene is that scene, and it matters not one bit, what camera you use, or what format you save the paint-by-numbers file, that scene is that scene, and no amount of digital diddling will make my ex-missus look like Kate Moss..... what's in front of the camera is in front of the camera, end of.
Next up. You take picture with a certain camera, with a certain shutter-speed, with a certain lens at a certain aperture. The shutter-speed influences the amount of motion blur you capture or avoid. The Lens, determines the field of view, and the aperture the Depth of Field. Again, if I take a photo of one of my kids darting about, what I get is what I get. I cannot, fudge the sums after the event, to get a wide angle photo from a telephoto lens, I cant diddle them to remove movement streaking, or change the focus. There is only a very limited amount that you might actually do with the 'Paint-By-Numbers' data-set... and mostly that is limited to merely changing the brightness and contrast of the colours within the picture, and even that, between pretty small limits.
So... file formats.... JPG is a 'standard', and it is pretty useful and convenient, and where most folk start. It IS 'lossy', but that need not be a bad thing.... the algorithm that records that digital data set, only records what 'it' thinks is actually important, and disguards 'some' data pretty much at source. In turning that data-set into a picture, by PBN, another algorithm probably discounts a bit more... but you get a picture, and the 'file' to make that picture isn't over-inflated with lots and lots of extra numbers and data 'just in case', so it can be quite compact.
Just as an idea, the same picture, the same 'pixel' dimensions, say 2,ooo by 3,ooo or 6 Mega Pixels, saved in JPG format, might be around 2 Mega-bytes, file--size, (note the units), where the same photo saved in RAW, still with the same 6 Mega Pixels to display would have a file size of typically 8 Mega-bytes. About 4x the file-size.... and it can be worse that that-Jim, if you edit a RAW file, the program you edit it in, doesn't 'save' the results of what you do to the image file, it saves the original image file, plus a list of instructions to do to that data-set what you told the program to do; so the file gets even bigger, where as, if you edited in J-peg, the program would only save the new, diddled data-set, and the resultant file would likely be smaller or at least no bigger in memory 'bytes'.
So J-peg IS 'lossy', but its like peeling the spuds and keeping the peelings 'just in case'... you chuck the peelings away, cos you aint never going to put the spud back-together.... Oh-Kay, if you kept the peelings you 'could', but? Would you ever really want to? Like I said, a 'Lossy' format need not be a bad thing, cos you don't have to store or manage an overly large file to keep hold of the 'peelings'. A-N-D... if you are a little diligent to start with, you 'back-up' original files, before you start messing with them anyway, and only mess with a copy. So... even if you do peel the spud, and decide, "Err, no, actually I don't want to make chips, roasters would be so much better"... you just don't start trying to re-assemble the spud, putting the chips back together and wrapping them back in the peelings.... you just chuck it all away, and go get another 'copy' of your 'master' and start peeling that...
Hmmm... so your 2Mb picture file... now you have doubled that up, and taken up 4Mb of hard-drive space to make a 'master-copy' of the original file, 'just in case'... it's still half the file-size of an 8Meg 'Raw' to do the same thing.... a-n-d, you can keep the 'master' on a completely different hard drive 'safe' whilst you work on the copy, a-n-d, when you are working on the copy, the computer isn't having to load 8Mb of numbers into its processor or shuffle 8Mb of date twixt hard storage and processor... so it TENDS to give whatever you are using to edit or even just view, your picture a lot less work to do, so it can do it quicker and easier.
Add to that.... JPG is a 'standard'. If you have a photo, straight out of camera, in JPG format, you can view it or share it, quickly and easily. The device you are using, likely has the algorithm in it already to be able to open that data-file, and Paint-By-Numbers, and give you something to look at. If you have a RAW or NEF or TIFF or PSD format file... probably not.... and before you can even look at the PBN picture, some bit of proprietary software that likely isn't on every and any computator you come across, has to look at it, do its PBN thing on it, and actually create a JPG for any-one to look at or mess with.
So, JPG has an awful lot going for it..... and you REALLY need to think hard whether any other format is 'really' going to do very much for you, to move away from it... and more, where there 'may' be an advantage to Raw format files... do you REALLY need a Raw format to get them, where you could do something else, like backing up your original image files.
Advantages of Raw file formats? Babies and Bathwater...
Well, if you haven't already gathered I am not really a 'Raw' 'fan'. There really aren't all that many advantages, and certainly not so many you cant get other, oft easier ways. And as has been alluded to, no the 'Pros' don't universally all shoot Raw, so if you have any aspirations to be a 'good' photographer, you should too.... particularly for Sports and Journalism, the 'Pros' most often shoot JPG, simply because it IS fast, it Is easy, it is 'Standard' and the small extra diddle-ability you 'may' have in a Raw format, probably isn't going to even be used, let alone exploited.
So, what advantages do you get with a Raw format, and more pertinently what advantage might you really want or make of them?
As said, you cant change what you pointed the camera at when you pressed the button; you cant change the lens that was on the front, you cant change what you were focused on, or the shutter-speed you used. AL you can do in ANY post-processing, is diddle the numbers and change the brightness and contrast... do you need or want to?
And since you could do that to a Jpg format picture, anyway, how far into the margins do you need to be or want to go, before the opportunities a Raw format may offer, actually become 'advantages' not 'drawbacks'.
Get it 'Clean-in-Camera' first off before you press the button; and you really don't HAVE to do much post-processing, at all, so whatever advantages Raw formats might have over Jpg, can be pretty redundant before you begin.... and in that, there is far more potential to become a better photographer, and get better images, than you will ever have trying to find some-sort of unicorn in alternative file-formats.
If I shoot NEF (Nikion-Extended-Format, their version of Raw, and essentially a Jpg with an extra data-table to say how they turned the PBN data-set into a 'picture')... in 'Windows' the files come up as an icon in the explorer-window, not a 'thumb-nail' to give me an idea what that picture was of. So to even just 'see' the picture as taken, I have to open up the Nikon editing software to have a look. Then, to get a file I can up-load to a hosting site or forum, or whatever, I have to create a JPG format image, in the editing software, from that!! Even if I do NOTHING to the image. So straight off the top, there is an extra layer of 'faff' to go through, and "Oh while I have it open......" the faff begs MORE faff still, encouraging you to 'do something' to the image in post-process..... which, IF you worked Clean-In-Camera, you probably wouldn't need to anyway, and even if you didn't, is most often an exercise in turdpolishing... it aint gonna make my ex Kate Moss!!
So, where post-process CAN be 'helpful', is in doing things you cant do 'Clean-In-Camera'.
A-N-D we are into the realms of photo-montaging, merging different images, which at the base layer, are like cut and pasting your mate outside the council offices, into a back-ground of the Eiffel Tower.... but go up from there into however convoluted montages you wish, really.... B-U-T, in that world, montages tend to only really 'work' when they have been planned and the montage sections taken specifically to be montaged. Eg, you don't 'just' try cut and past your mate outside the council offices against a back-drop of the Eiful Tower, because the shadows and perspectives will never really marry up. To do it, half convincingly, you take the photo of your mate, not infront of the council offices, but infront of a blue-screen in a studio. You already have the back-ground shot of the Eiffel tower, and in the studio, you pose your mate to get matching lighting angles and shadows to whats there in the back-drop you want to C&P them into.... Which is but one example, and if you want to talk about HDR, or focus stacking or panorama stitching etc etc etc, its ALL variations on the same basic technique, and they nearly all depend on shooting your elements specifically TO post process, not serendipity lashing together whatever photo's you have 'scavenged'
Back to getting it Clean-In-Camera... A-N-D, if you are shooting specifically to post process... its EVEN more critical to get it right, first time, at point of capture and not 'hope' on some magic method of turdpolishing to get what you hoped for.
There are an awful lot of Raw format aficionado's, and they all support the 'Lore' that in some way it is 'better' and we all aught use it..... sorry to disagree, but, its simply NOT true. There 'may' be some reason to shoot RAW format, BUT, unless you know just exactly what they are, and where and when they may make a difference, which IS significantly in post-process, where you can far too easily get into a mire convincing yourself just how essential it is, and how huge a difference it makes to your photo's, loosing ever more sight of the wood for the trees as you wonder into that forest, it is just so often more of a hindrance than a help, and you REALLY would be better off spending your time and attention on the upfront diligence of getting it CinC to start with, not obsessing over minutia of possible post-process techniques and technologies! Because even if you DO get to exploit PP, it comes back to that, and shooting CinC to get what you want to PP!
To wit the short answer is it makes little or no odds! And JPG has an awful lot of advantages, you probably would get more from if you looked at them and appreciated them, and didn't just chuck the baby out with the bath-water 'Cos the Pos!"
So should you give RAW a try? Well... its about as open a question as asking whether you should try a fish-eye lens, or chocoloate-chilli sauce! Yeah.... you can.... but that alone don't mean you should, or that its a particularly great idea, less, that it will revolutionise your photography!!!