I never liked illustrator but inkscape is straight forward to me. But I am a long time user of Corel Draw which is quite similar so inkscape feels like home, so

I never liked illustrator but inkscape is straight forward to me. But I am a long time user of Corel Draw which is quite similar so inkscape feels like home, so I guess your background matters. It's simple things like point selection that make all the difference. Inkscape is open source with good ui while gimp feels like they are trying to add as many tools as possible under the same application with no regard of user experience.