damned_colonial is right: all gallery software sucks too. I've just tried Flickr and it sucks too. I suppose it's not really a gallery site (like Fotopic), more a photo blogging site. I've put up the B-Movie: Lost Boys photos from Friday on it TEMPORARILY. No captions as yet. I can't find the way to change the appearance of a set, and if I read the FAQ right then free users get three photo sets total. Hints and tips from you enthusiastic Flickr fans on how to do what I actually want would be welcomed.
Gallery 2 is still annoying me. I've beaten most of the annoyances out of it and could probably beat many of the rest out (colours, logos, etc.) by hacking the PHP. Does anyone know how to get it to email comments to you automatically? Surely you aren't supposed to iteratively check possibly thousands of photos for new comments.
Slowly coalescing at the back of my brain is what I'd need to write my own gallery system. In unspeakable shell scripts, of course. I'll probably have to learn CSS as well, after having assiduously avoided it for several years.