It’s that phenomenon where people who endured trauma to attain something expect others to also endure the trauma.
I’ve tried learning GIMP, and it sucks. I’m not saying GIMP sucks, but you have to be crazy to not see that it’s hard to learn.
No, GIMP does suck.
It has the same problem as most FOSS packages that are too wide in breadth and have multiple contributors with their own hobby horses pulling in all different directions, and to this day does not actually provide a feature-complete whole, nor an interface that actually makes sense. And it’s not a matter of the workflow just being different – it categorically fails to replicate functionality that is core to its commercial competitors. Numerous other “big” productivity packages have the same problem including FreeCAD (boy does it ever), LibreOffice, etc. I say this as a staunch supporter of FreeCAD, by the way. It’s the only CAD software I use even though it’s a pain in my ass.
The shining exception to this I see is Inkscape, but it is still significantly less powerful than even early versions of CorelDraw.
For 2D graphics work these days, I hold my nose and just use Corel. I use it for work. Like, actual commercial work. That I get paid for. It is at least a lesser evil than doing business with Adobe.
And if you want to stick it to the man, it is easily pirated.
In FOSS most people can program, but only a hand full of people can design a decent UI.