On Windows I use TortoiseGit and although I find certain things to require a few more clicks than I would like, it has been able to handle very nearly everything I have ever needed to do with Git. Management of worktrees seems to be the only thing I wish it would add, but once you add a worktree folder using the command line, it is then able to work with it perfectly fine.
It even recently added dark mode!
Every other Git GUI I've tried only seems to cover "pull", "merge" and "push" workflows competently, at best. If you want to do anything more complex like even a slightly interesting rebase, then they seem to be a nightmare. So I completely agree with your assessment there.
I don't really know Git CLI very well and the thought of using it exclusively seems very inefficient and painful. As with any decent GUI program, TortoiseGit exposes available functionality reasonably well and you don't have to resort to reading a large manual to become proficient.
For both Linux and Mac (which I use rarely to work on issues with a cross-platform Electron app), I have yet to find a Git GUI app that I am satisfied with.
When I looked, Fork appears to be pretty good, I should probably at least try the evaluation and if it's okay just pay the seemingly reasonable $50 fee, but it's a pity it doesn't also support Linux.
I know GitKraken works on Linux, but it's one of those clients which is not nearly powerful enough for my needs and it costs $60 a year, I think GitKraken's popularity is largely driven by their eye-candy and that many Git users don't really understand Git beyond the simple workflows.
As a novice, you don't understand the benefit provided by the tools, so you don't bother learning them. As an expert, you've forgotten the shape and impact of the massive learning curve faced by the novice so you don't understand why they don't bother overcoming it.
I suspect the 80/20 rule applies here - a GUI provides 80% of the value of a source control system, 80% of the time. If occasionally you do have to delete everything and start again, that may actually be a more effective technique than spending a lot of time learning Git beforehand, despite how crazy it looks from the perspective of an expert.
When you use git directly, you at least get all the tools to solve your problems. When you use (most) frontends, you don't. And you learn: If there are errors, just start over - much easier!
This is not the fault of developers, it's shitty tooling + bad tutorials + bad defaults in tooling + unsuitable defaults in git (git's defaults are for the workflow used in the kernel, NOT the workflow most git users use, which is completely different; it's actually amazing that the same tool can support both workflows pretty well, with the right config settings).