Have you tried Gimp's single-window mode? I'm not familiar with Photoshop but I hated Gimp's old windowed interface. Single-window is what made it usable by me, and in fact I don't see how the UI could now be any better considering what it does.

As for commercial support, with the notable exceptions of Amazon and Rackspace, I cannot think of any commercial support that has been worth anything more than a good FAQ documentation would be. Can one really ask beginner questions on their commercial support, like one could do in a forum with a large user base?