There has been an evolution to Gramps to mitigate these some of these blocks.
Gramps now brings up the Manage Family Trees upon 1st launch.
Unfortunately, new users generally cancel this thinking that they’ll just open (rather than import) a GEDCOM or just want to see the interface.
5.2 will have a more explicit set of Dashboard prompts to guide the new user.
However, a series of utterly Blank views is what greets most new explorers. Perhaps we should agree that Blankness should NEVER be a valid situation?