Inkscape can definitely seem clunky, the UI isn’t as refined to look at, but it does do most things pretty well. There’s a great series of tutorials out there:
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/index.html
This guy is pretty good at explaining the nuts and bolts stuff you’ll need to work with the glowforge, nodes, paths, etc.
Illustrator is better at centerline traces, but other than that, I’ve never found myself unable to do something that I needed.