Yeah, every time I have ever tried Gimp, attempting to do anything felt like someone had purposefully been contrarian and made every operation work in the hardest and most confusing way.

And someone may say, "well, you just have to learn it!" OK, sure. Or I can use something that makes much more sense from the jump like Affinity Photo. (Yes, I know you have to pay for it, but it's worth it. Yes, I know not everyone has the money to do so.)

this is exactly my opinion on it. one of my main gripes was the text rendering. if i needed to change some text i basically had to redo all of the work on any shadow or stroke as well, not just correct a spelling mistake or whatever. very excited to check out the new version.

It is not a nice program to use.

Holy hell. I felt like that 20+ years ago when I started using it... I'm surprised that it never got better, from the sound of it.