Doubtlessly many GIMP haters, myself included, are frustrated because GIMP made many UI decisions that are incompatible with Photoshop without offering any comp

Doubtlessly many GIMP haters, myself included, are frustrated because GIMP made many UI decisions that are incompatible with Photoshop without offering any compelling improvement. For example, zoom in PS is ctrl-minus and ctrl-equals, whereas in GIMP it is minus (no ctrl) and plus (aka shift-equals). This change is very annoying because zooming is one of the most common actions in photo editing and becomes part of your muscle memory. This design choice, and many others in keyboard shortcuts, menu layouts, etc. contribute to a feeling that GIMP tried to break compatibility with Photoshop on purpose for no reason. It feels like GIMP is actively hostile to Photoshop users. It also feels like the GIMP developers were very arrogant to think that following their design whims was more worthwhile than being compatible with a well-loved industry standard program. For serious photo editing, GIMP is completely useless because it lacks the Adjustment Layers feature that is critical for non-destructive editing, and it did not even support 16-bit color until a few months ago. GIMP is one of the huge failures in open-source software IMO. They should have just made a Photoshop clone.