The GUI search should work fine these days. (It was broken about 6 months ago due to the room lists getting too big, but was fixed in https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/6019).

It's true you have to pick a server to use, but we try to provide decent defaults (although it's true matrix.org has been overloaded recently).

We're trying to simplify onboarding via P2P Matrix - by default, you'd start off entirely P2P, and only pick a server if you want to 'anchor' your account somewhere.

I have a feeling you may be going off outdated impressions here; we've been desperately trying to improve UI/UX (as per https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing... and https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing...).