Does the history or duplicating the working/background layer not cover that?

No, it doesn't. Adjustment layers aren't committed; they're just a set of instructions that can later be altered.

Isn't that what layers are for?

Take an example you scaled down and 1000x1000px image to 100x100px and then scaled it up back to 1000x1000px. In the process you lost a lot of info on the image.

PS solves that by using Smart Objects, Krita by Transform Masks, GIMP? Nope

To be fair, photoshop didnt always do this. I still use CS2 and it definetely doesn't work like you describe.

I'd say that GIMP is somewhat comparable to the feature set of CS2, though I admit I havent used gimp much.

Smart Objects were introduced in CS2, so no, :)

Ah you are right. It gives the illusion of quality loss until you commit the change, and then it looks crisp again.

Obviously you should loose all of your details. You shouldn't be doing this at any rate.