On the other hand... who actually disables over-committing on their Linux servers or the machines they run image editors on so that you could actually handle out-of-memory errors? I've never come across anyone who's changed the setting unless told to by a specific piece of software (almost always database software).
I do. Not only do I disable overcommit, I disable swap.
Most software is riddled with buffer overflows and other exploits, and yet it's rare that you come across an intruder while he's installing his rootkit. That doesn't mean it's not happening, just that people are ignorant about it; and that things can appear normal even with rootkits installed.
Like buffer bloat, people can be experiencing a problem without even realizing it's a problem. When software crashes under load they just think that it's _normal_ to crash under load.
Or when it crawls to a snails pace under load because it's swapping like mad, they think that's normal, even though QoS would have been much better if the software failed the requests it couldn't serve rather than slowing everybody down until they _all_ timeout, sometimes even preventing administrators from diagnosing and fixing the problem.
OOM provides back pressure. Back pressure is much more reliable and responsive than, e.g., relying on magic constants for what kind of load you _think_ can be handled.
