My daughter lost her social studies essay because LibreOffice doesn't have autosave on automatically.
This is about the most recent version of LibreOffice on Windows 10. I can't speak for other versions.
My daughter worked hard on her social studies essay. I type things in for her because she’s a really bad typist, but she tells me what to write… but I didn’t remember to manually save her social studies essay yesterday, and for some reason the ThinkPad rebooted, LibreOffice crashed and we lost the whole thing... because autosave was not automatically on when I installed it.
No, recovery didn't work. We just got a blank file.
I rewrote it for her based on the information we had and what I remembered and tried to make it sound like what a 13-year-old would write because it was basically my fault and she did do the work. I did have her sit with me as I wrote it in case she didn’t like something I wrote, but it was sort of cheating. I'm okay with that cheating since I know she worked hard on it.
First, though, I went into the settings and turned on autosave.
I like LibreOffice, but why the hell is that not on automatically? Honestly, I don't really understand why someone wouldn't want their documents autosaved, but I'm pretty sure most people would want that.
This isn't fucking 1993. I shouldn't have to remember to save a document anymore and it shouldn't be lost forever because of it.
Like I said, I like LibreOffice. I don't really want to trust documents to Microsoft or Google. But this was really annoying.
I might end up throwing in the towel and going with that or Google Docs, but, and I know these are just a child's school essays, I hate giving Microsoft and Google more data just on principle because who the hell knows what they're doing with all that data.
Libreoffice will likely still work fine for you, especially now that you've got autosave turned on. Heck, I have faculty that refuse to use anything other than LibreOffice, so I have it installed in our computer labs. As long as you're saving and backing up reasonably often, you should be good to go. Though your school likely has a cloud suite that you could use too. Office365 and Google Workspaces are by far the most popular. It would be integrated with your daughter's student email which I can't imagine a modern school not having. If you're not sure, contact the school and they'd be able to help you.
I'm sorry your kid lost her paper! It's always a bummer to take a call and it's a kid crying because their paper went up in smoke. If you haven't already, contact the teacher and let them know what happened. IME most teachers are reasonable and as long as "office ate my homework" isn't your go-to excuse, they'll give you an extension.
I appreciate it, thanks. It's all been sorted out now, so we can just move on and we've both learned a lesson.
In addition to the other comment, if your school has a paid O365 or Google account it’s far less likely that they’re vacuuming up your data because you’re now an enterprise account that they actually care about keeping, unlike a personal account. Even more so if it’s an account for a child, which usually requires stricter privacy controls.
Honestly though, as much much as I despise Microsoft and Google, I would never recommend anything else to my parents / family because I know they just don’t care as much as I do, and they’re not willing to learn or change anything. It doesn’t sound like you’re quite that way, but perhaps still less comfortable with something that’s not 100% rock solid. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to go with some of these paid services if it means you’re going to be happier.
The school, unfortunately, does not pay for such things. But I do understand what you're saying. The thing is I'm trying to be more responsible about that sort of thing after a long time of not being very responsible about it and when this sort of thing happens, it can be a mildly infuriating experience because it doesn't do what I would expect the commercial alternative to do, although most of the time it is not on this level because data isn't lost.
Maybe that is unreasonable of me, but it still makes me feel that way.
No I definitely get it… I’ve definitely been more than mildly infuriated when my FOSS replacement doesn’t work as well. All a journey, best of luck to you!
Thanks, you too!