FYI: It does have the option to save automatically:

Some weeks ago I wrote my probabilities homework on LaTeX, every couple of lines I press F5 to compile and see how it was looking. I was pretty sure that compiling automatically saved the project, but I was wrong and lost and entire night of LaTeX work. Now I know that I need to manually save first, after that compiling save the project and the compiled pdf when F5.

At work i use a $800 proprietary shit software that has a 70% chance of crashing when printing (so it crashes when job is done)

So I got used to Ctrl+S every. Single. Sentence.

Windows 10 home loves to automatically reboot to install the fucking updates IMMEDIATELY. RIGHT. NOW. And Microsoft pushed some big update just a few days ago. When LibreOffice crashes usually there's a recovery feature. It's windows. Windows wanted to install the fucking updates and it told LibreOffice to gracefully close RIGHT NOW, and NO, THE USER DOESN'T WANT TO SAVE, the user wants to get updates immediately ASAP

Btw automatically saving is a generally undesirable feature as it could reduce the lifetime of ssds, slowdown the system if the file Is big or stored on slow media like network.

Wait, all this time I thought that LibreOffice sutosaved after doing the first manual save. Oof, how do I turn it on, just in case?

Nah, she lost it, because your Thinkpad suddenly rebooted. Investigate that first.

And must be a distro-specific thing, it's on here by default.

Always save first, and name the file.

Er, you lost your daughters essay because you assumed that autosave was enabled.

Never rely on autosaves for anything, ever.

Make them play Fallout NV, and then

TEACH. YOUR. KID. TO. SAVE.

Damn, you got hit with a severe case of triple bad luck (machine, software and humanness).

As someone who thanks to you got reminded to look at their software backup settings, thanks for your sacrifice.

Even if its on by default, first thing you should do when installing or first using it is adjust the settings imo. How often is still a matter of personal choice. And other settings are as well. Granted, I get I'm probably far from the average given how much I like to tinker with settings and customizing toolbars, etc. Still agree it should be on by default along with some basic version history to undo unwanted autosaves.

One time I couldn't work on an assignment at school because I typed it in Microsoft works and school used Microsoft word.

Thanks, didn't know it had an autosave feature, but I do now. Your story is appreciated