Mayayana wrote:

My other basic setup requirement was that I should be
able to get that setup done without having to resort
to primitive command line operations in a console window
and without having to dig through obscure config files
in /etc. Both times the experiment was short-lived. One
can hardly do anything without needing a console window.
That's inexcusable in a post-1995 OS.

Obviously you've never worked with a modern Linux distro. Try it sometime.
Perhaps GIMP sucks but I've used it about twice. That's not my bag; software
development is.