This is just my personal experience, but even with the current UI, there can tend to be a learning curve with GIMP. Alot of it probably comes from figuring out where tools and functionality that are readily available upfront in other paint programs are hidden 2-3 menus deep in GIMP

I've never understood the negative comments around UX for GIMP. It always feels just fine for me. Some stuff is in menus, but its a complex application with a lot of parts so I understand that

That’s what happens when you let people do other people's jobs. UI/UX design is a profession, and there is a reason for that.

Unfortunately, designers are rare among the FOSS community. You can't attract real casual or professional users if you don't recognize the value of professional UI/UX.

Blender feels like an outlier amongst open source software. Outside of programmers tools the great majority of open source feels mediocre. I wonder what the Blender people did differently.

A simple trick to make GIMP perfectly usable (exists since ages):

> To change GIMP to single-window mode (merging panels into one window), go to "Windows" in the top menu and select or check "Single-Window Mode"; this merges all elements like the Toolbox, Layers, and History into one unified view.

For texting I recommend using a mobile phone or desktop instant messaging program. While it's not the case with all of them, graphics editing tools tend to have texting utilities as a second-class citizen at best

Can you detail what you mean by good texting tool? What features are missing?

for the downvoters:

could you please show me a good textting tool plugin for GIMP, then?

you can check their forums & other sites: the textingtools is on top of their discussion lists?

FTFY: the funny thing with GIMP is: even while its a very powerful tool, it still lacks a good image editing tool until today

Nothing stops you from creating a PR :-)))