It seems a little weird to compare them, given that GIMP is primarily for editing bitmap images and Inkscape is primarily for editing vector images.

Because people with the free time to do so have already come together and organized themselves around a single Linux distribution for this purpose?

You do not come across as clever as you think that you are when your central point is that you personally are not capable of understanding code written in a different programming language.

I am sorry that you have had this much trouble, but I cannot agree that this experience is as typical as you are making it out to be. For me, the experience has always been that I install Linux and it Just Works out of the box, save for some things like printer/scanner drivers which you generally also need to download on Windows. Furthermore, it is far more pleasant as a desktop experience than Windows.

(In fairness, though, I completely agree with you that Windows has more capabilities than Linux, given all of the advertisements it insists on showing me.)

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.

- Bjarne Stroustrup

My services are so small that it is impossible to know just how fast they are running!