Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UI works quite well with a focus-follows-mouse policy - as it has been standard in Unix for decades. With today's click-to-focus window managers the UI is just horrible (but that's not Gimp's fault).
To an extent it is Gimp's fault, though. It's not as though click-to-focus is a new fad that's sprung up and surprised everyone -- it's been the default way focus has worked in GNOME and KDE for as long as I can remember, and I've been using it for the best part of fifteen years on Linux. The fact that such a common use case (almost certainly the most common use case, not to mention Gimp-related irritation, for at le…
I'm not one of those people, but I have a similar background, and GIMP has suited me pretty well for the photo-retouching and website-graphics work I've done.