In reply to Hugh.

In my experience, permalinks are one of those settings in WordPress that are set and forget. Once you have the ones you like, you never touch them again unless it's part of the troubleshooting process. That's an interesting idea to present the options on install and I don't think it would be hard to explain what they are on the screen.

This move is aligned with the decisions over options development philosophy but as you illustrate, WordPress doesn't make the right decision for you.