Different focus.

Krita is for free drawing, gimp is a photoshop replacement.

I do agree they probably would benefit from trying Krita.

I often hear that Krita has a different focus, but does it lack anything that GIMP has? (disregarding obscure features like bell pepper brush)

Yes it does.

I am mostly using krita for painting and gimp for general editing and composing usually so I haven't double-checked every single feature on both but I have one example: krita can open a pdf but cannot save it and doesn't even have a "print" functionality. Found out when trying to sign a contract with krita on my convertible thinkpad. Gimp makes it a breeze in comparison.

I am sure there are other features missing in both directions. It is great to have choice.

I haven't missed anything in my usage, I just wish it had photoshop's easy automation tools where I could record and save my actions but Krita has scripting support so I'll learn that eventually.

(And I'm sure someone has ported the pepper brush as well!)

Krita is a better Photoshop than GIMP, in my opinion. I don't care what its intended usage is.