I understand that real men like you want their software to hit them in the face on start-up, and then refuse to do anything until you type SUDO, but LibreOffice UI isn't even "good" kind of difficult. It's not like Vim, where once you learn how to use it you become much more productive. LibreOffice is just a plain old mess. You start by selecting one of four UIs, where you need to guess which one actually works (I remember that a basic feature that I needed, after the extensive search, turned out to be unavailable in the UI that I selected at the start).

Maybe the "you never get a second chance for a first impression" is indeed unfair but it is hurdle for adoption.

In my case my motivation to keep using and trying LibreOffice is driven by the hate for MS and not by the love for LO.

For example: I went through some eye surgeries and really needed a dark mode. But I couldnt get a dark mode in which buttons still were cleary visible. Icons not showing well and hard to tell what they were for. Meaning I kept hoping the tooltips showed something usefull. But "reading" icons is a bit strange .... I am sure if I search forums, git issues and documentation something usefull will turn up.

And maybe its infantile like you said but I sure like contextual filled menubars since PaintshopPro in 2005. So whats with the empty menus showing a handfull buttons and everything else in some cornermenu? Seems like a waste of screen real estate.

As for dataloss: sure my data wasnt lost but loading and pivoting a 90k row data table made Calc freeze and only restarted after killing it. 90k is not for everyone but it sure isnt a lot either in spreadsheet land.

They can develop multiple UI's. One for normal users and a classic one for people who like everything without a single menu bar or drop down menu to abstract the clutter away