I've never found anything I needed to do difficult or not possible in gimp. The folks that rely upon proprietary photoshop only plug ins or have simply only used photoshop, they'll never like gimp because they must relearn stuff. Has nothing to do with the abilities of the software. The folks that claim photoshop is "better designed" are simply making justifications for keeping the proprietary software costs to avoid learning the new software.
Use whatever you like but do understand it is a choice of convenience and nothing more.