Ive seen little if any chatter that GIMP is better in terms of capability. About Gimp:
Not that great if you are professional publisher for years (and maybe still (I have not used it in some time) it did not support CYMK.
Gimp does serve all the needs for a vast majority of the people who need an image editor. And given the price (free) for those people GIMP is better because of the price vs needed functionality.
But If youre going to run a print shop I would not do so on gimp.. Better is very *very* subjective..
I seriously have seen plenty of people try to push the idea that GIMP is equivalent or superior to Photoshop.
GIMP is at best the equivalent of Paint.net.