who knows how to use the program GIMP?

I've got it, and I've used it to do basic things, but being used to Photoshop I'm amazed at how difficult the GIMP makes everything.

The other day I was just trying to carve pieces out of a layer using the selection tool - I figured I could highlight an area and hit the delete key, like Photoshop (and like you'd think). Nope. I ended up just cutting over and over, but there's got to be a better way. The whole program seems powerful enough, but it's not even as user friendly as an old version of Photoshop.