Used gimp since v0.54 back in the 90's. It's sure come a long way since then. I've been using v2.9.x on Linux and lately trying it on Windows 10. Not so good on Windows, but the Linux version seems pretty solid.

IOW for most users, including me, gimp 2.9 will be good enough for most anything we're likely to throw at it. And BTW I think xfce works well, reasonably complete (except for controlling Wacom drawing tablets). To me KDE/Gnome, might as well be using Windows...