>>8
Because of all the choice, a program's designer can't be certain what other programs or desktop environmnets or window managers may be paired with the stuff they write. Not predefining too many program-specific keyboard shortcuts is a courtesy to users and other developers: it avoids conflicts.

I happen to like configurability. The only time I see the defaults is when I deliberately nuke my config files out of curiosity. How do you determine whether a default is sane? Is it sane not to include any hint of a tabbed-browsing capability in a tabbed browser (Firefox hides the tab bar and has no New Tab toolbutton by default)? Is it sane to drop MP3 support by default to protect users from licensing issues (Red Hat, SuSE)? Is it sane to conceal options that change highly controversial defaults in a registry-editor-like thing (toggling Nautilus between spatial and navigator mode)? Is it sane to have a different menu layout in every single distro and window manager so I have to relearn where to find everything whenever I sit down at a different box?

No thanks, I'll take configurability over sanity. A few minutes of user-customisation is worth the added efficiency it brings.