That's a false dichotomy.
I just want to drive the car too. But I also want to be able to QUICKLY choose amongst several options, not spend 8 years configuring the damned thing. I used to be able to do that with GNOME. Now it's an easter egg hunt to find exactly the right obscurely named registry entry to fiddle, if it even exists any more. I've given up to a certain extent because I just want to get my work done, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it.
One person's "sane defaults" are another person's pain in the ass.
Lots of configurable options don't ruin usability unless the developer creates an unusable configuration application. It's not as if the configuration panel is always there. You have to open it up before your brain (according to you) is numbed by the bewildering array of options. God forbid people might actually fiddle with them. That would NEVER happen. People are sheep who are just be content with the spoon-fed "sane defaults".
Anyone who believes that that sort of user is going to be a desktop Linux user is living in a reality distortion field.
