@GrahamDowns There are no plans to remove the "traditional" layout – so no worries 😉 Regarding making something the default, that's a difficult task we have to juggle.
Is our goal to help as many people as possible to use Free and Open Source software?
If yes, we need to make an app that's appealing and welcoming to new users too. Making the tabbed interface the default on new installations one day may be important in that. But of course, with a very obvious way to switch...