TLDR. Most people never take the time to learn software and use it to its full potential.
Gimp in it's default is horrible. No wonder it gets so much criticism.
(Default with it's notorious disattached windows, and no way to easily access brushes and colors.)
(full Window mode, light theme and brush, layer and color side bar) This is how you get the most of gimp.
You have to get rid of the dark theme, enable single window mode, Give gimp keyboard shortcuts and or mouse shortcuts to enlarge/shrink brushes on command.
In my case "1 key" shrinks the brush and "2 key" enlarges it. "Shift + 1 key" would decrease it by 10 pixels. Some people prefer the mouse to enlarge keys. Gimp makes this very easy to do but most people sadly don;t know that.
After that you have to set keyboard shortcuts to manage layers and switch brushes. Download custom brushes that fit your fancy. Download G'mic (gimp filters), Assign your favorite brushes and make sure the "brush dialog" is extended on the side panel. I also forgot to mention assigning stroke brushes and shortcuts so one can draw circles,squares and rectangles.
Once you are done, Gimp becomes an
excellent program. Save your preference settings as .Json or make a folder back up of gimps settings. You also have to save custom brushes and textures in a folder so you can transform any version of gimp 2.10 into your defaults.
Overall Gimp has an advantage on Windows as plugins that work on the Windows version of gimp don't work on the Linux version. This is unironic considering Gimp is known for being FOSS software originating from the linux community. But it's an undeniable fact that some mods for gimp are sometimes windows exclusive.
I don't understand why gimp is so digusting in it's default mode, people don't usually take the time to configure things. They just pay $80 USD a month for photoshop. Alternatively if they don't like gimp they can just run CS5
(the last version of photoshop that isn't subscription based) Gimp is superior to CS5 as I have it and prefer gimp.
It's "/" search function is basically S tier usability. Any program that has this becomes 50 times better for instant access to anything.