In what way do vim default keybinds not work vs Helix's since they seem to be very similar (outside of the whole selection-first behavior inversion)?
In general, I agree that good defaults is the way to go, and vim is worse here (except for the theme, helix's default is bad), though again, the alternative isn't a many knobs paralysis, but a better starting set.
Oh, vim's keybindings are fine. But vim is missing LSP, completion, file pickers / fuzzy finding, surround operations, easymotion jumps, and displaying buffers in the tab line. Those need to be added with plugins.
That's what's clogging up my init.lua, not keybindings. I'm glad I can adjust keybindings in both helix and vim. It's the plugins I resent, and with helix, these features are bundled in.
Not sure this is what the OP had in mind but in my experience Helix just ships with more keybinds than bare vim/nvim. Many of the nice keybinds shipped by LazyVim that I can't live without now (symbol search, LSP jumps, treesitter navigation etc) work out of the box in Helix.
In general, I agree that good defaults is the way to go, and vim is worse here (except for the theme, helix's default is bad), though again, the alternative isn't a many knobs paralysis, but a better starting set.