When running GnuCash for the first time, I was not prompted to save my accounts as a file after the account hierarchy druid completed.  Additionally, the Save button was not enabled while editing unsaved files (the Save As command was enabled under the file menu, however).  This led me to believe the file was already saved in a default location (this was my first experience with GnuCash).  After closing and reopening the program, I was quite surprised to find no file was opened, and the accounts I had created were nowhere to be found after inspecting my home directory and the ~/.gnucash directory.

This happened with GnuCash 2.4.7 on Gentoo Linux x86_64.

Further invocations of the account hierarchy druid *did* prompt me to save a file at the end when creating new files, but not the instance which is run the first time the program is started.

I was able to replicate this behavior by removing the ~/.gnucash directory and the /apps/gnucash key under gconf and then running GnuCash again: no save dialog is presented at the end of first time setup.

Specifically:
# mv -v ~/.gnucash ~/.gnucash.old
# gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/gnucash
# gnucash

I have marked this bug as major as I feel it affects the impression GnuCash makes on new users (as in my case).  I entered approximately a month's worth of transactions while going through the concepts manual (which is great, thanks!), but lost all that data after closing the program the first time.

I would also like to suggest that: the Save button be enabled for unsaved files, and that it simply behaves like Save As under these circumstances; and that GnuCash prompts to save new files on exit.  These behaviors are quite common for file-based GUI programs and are probably what a lot of new users will expect (I did).

Also, thanks for such a great program.