Inkscape is the shit
Adobe
I've made my living from Photoshop for a very long time. I started using Photoshop with version 1.0.3. I use it in a professional context; I’ve worked on everything from annual reports to cruise ship catalogs to billboards to album covers in Photoshop.
I pay for Photoshop because GIMP does, as of the last time I used it (which was admittedly about four years ago), perhaps 15% to 20% of what Photoshop does.
A lot of people will tell you GIMP can do everything Photoshop does. These are people who do not know what Photoshop does.
Photoshop is designed by a huge number of people with extreme technical knowledge in a wide range of diverse areas. People on the Photoshop team include experts in prepress, print reproduction, color theory, color calibration and profiling, and more. GIMP is…well, let’s be honest: it’s written by amateurs. They’re very talented, and for many people GIMP does just what they need. But it’s not Photoshop.
—Franklin Veaux, author and graphic designer
✨ GIMP (Windows, Mac, Linux) (If you're planning on bashing GIMP, just move on. Nobody cares)
— KenneyNL
No, of course people care. People who make a living using Photoshop and other Adobe products care, and in fact, that is the single most important thing they care about.
What would be correct to say here is you don't care. And that's fair enough, but don't claim that you represent everyone's opinion.
"Let me just bash one of the alternatives on a list of 24+ because I have a particular stick up my ass for it" - You.
Nobody is telling you to use gimp, there's literally 24 + choices there for a reason, there's no single 1:1 equivalent. If there was, only one thing would be worth listing as an alternative, now wouldn't it? Pick one or multiple of the alternatives to best fit your use case if you decide Adobe is stomping on your foot too hard, that's it, it's that simple.
Respectfully, take the stick out your ass.