I never want to see a bounding box (I simply don't care and 99% of the time it gets in the way). Instead, I want to the the selected shape outline (EDIT: aaaand while posting this I found the outline button in the node tool at least... but pre-selection would be interesting too!).

How do I turn off that (also quite ugly) bounding box permanently?

Maybe this:

Thank you! (No outline option, though, sadly.)

Menu: View>Display Mode>Outlines

No, not my point. My point is that I want to see an outline for the objects selected, just as I now see them with the node tool (actually, I was fine with not seeing an outline using the node tool, because the node tool changes the shape of the objects so you don't really need an outline... that option is much more missed using the regular selection tool).

But I guess I'll have to live with this.

There is also split/ x-ray, and outline overlay.

Just noticed that the node tool now has a 1 second outline pre-selection highlight so I'll just use that!

(Still would have loved to have the same in the selection tool for multiple objects... like, not sure why the node tool's many selection options haven't been transferred also to the selection tool's sadly very minimal options.)