"Subsurface, a program for divers, was another high-profile switch"
I can't see how subsurface, which is an extremely niche application, can be considered as high-profile. And I am a scuba diver myself, so I have a bias going opposite what my opinion here is.
" If he and a bunch ... can't figure out GTK, that says something"
All it says is that they like Qt better. Linus told at a Debian meeting that he does not use Ubuntu or Debian because he tried once to install it and it did not work for his hardware, while some other distro worked right away. He never tried it again since. Does it mean that Debian is crap because if even Linus cannot figure it out "it says something"? No, of course not.
As terms, none is "better" than the other, those are different things. A simple google search will reveal the definitions.