I regret to read that you had a horrible time on your first try of Gutenberg. There is a slight learning curve from the old editor to Gutenberg, for sure.
the blocks are almost impossible to see on the page
Is this because of low contrast of the boundaries? The light gray might be an issues there.
The Block settings are for the particular block where you just clicked. Only the settings for the active block are visible in the sidebar > Block tab.
nothing works properly
If you get another minute, maybe you can elaborate on what exactly doesn’t work. The “Try Gutenberg” phase, is meant to get feedback from users like you and find out what stumbling blocks keep people before having a pleasant experience with Gutenberg, especially if there are incompatibilities with other plugins, themes and operating systems.
I hope, you give it another try in the near future, though.
