they are not very popular in the DIY community!
They are.
Those are segment lcds, and depending on their complexity, they can be fairly consumed to drive, as most have no controller chips on them.
Once challenge with those chips is that they require ac to drive, and in the case of multi-com displays, you may have to produce bias to drive them. But they are fairly doable and sometimes you may run into chips with built-in lcd controllers for those displays.