I tried all of that and they all just suck. E.g. neither pinta nor krita don’t show selection rectangle coords in the status bar. How the heck should I e.g. investigate screenshot-based automation fails with that? What makes paint.net stand out is that it is a pixel canvas tool with layers rather than an artistic canvas for soft brushes. And at the same time it has all its features easily accessible.

I have also worked as a “designer” in a real typography for some time and know a thing or two about the process (not fully, but count me as sort of an insider). And I can tell you that gimp is only “an artist’s impression” of a graphical toolbox, and that artist is heavily drunk. If you need something like gimp and paint.net/etc isn’t enough, you need photoshop. Cause we’re talking about serious pre-print color management, etc. Gimp is two parts: very poor home graphics editor and very poor industrial graphics manager.

Youtube thumbnails are paint.net 100%. I use that all the time for all my graphics, technical and creative, tried all others, and have no reason to switch, apart from OS requirements.