You didn't. I am sorry if I implied you did. I was referring to the average stereotypical art student gone internet troll who are often quite vocal in bringing out their dislike of free as in freedom tools vs. their favorite free as in pirated proprietary software.
> I'll download it and give Gimp another go.
You do that and tell us if you felt it was better. Tell the GIMP devs too, they get too little positive feedback.
I'd like everyone to do this but this just isn't going to convert you to GIMP overnight. If you are as invested into the Photoshop tools as you say you are you will just get frustrated at the UI differences and give up within a few days. After all why should anyone struggle with a free software if you've already paid a thousand bucks for Photoshop and memorized all the shortcuts that make you a Photoshop machine.
Having said that, if you were ever in a bind and you had to give GIMP a try for a prolonged period of time, it would be capable of everything you ever wanted to do in Photoshop.
The only way that would make the GIMP an alternative to photoshop would be for your time to be worth NOTHING.
It's the same thing with Photoshop I guess; You invest heavily in the tool chain -- I know basically every keyboard shortcut there is by tactile memory -- and suddenly your definition of usability in image manipulation becomes 'The inverse of the squared distance to Photoshop'.
I'll download it and give Gimp another go.