This was originally a test failure, but my suggestion in the end would be to come up with a settings smoke test that leverages the settings UI editor if possible.
1) VSCode Smoke Tests (Electron)
Preferences
turns off editor line numbers and verifies the live change:
Error: Timeout: get elements '.line-numbers' after 20 seconds.
at poll (D:\a\1\s\test\automation\src\code.ts:109:10)
at Code.waitForElements (D:\a\1\s\test\automation\src\code.ts:258:10)
at Context.<anonymous> (src\areas\preferences\preferences.test.ts:23:4)