Activities

English Applications
#1

Hi, yesterday, in an attempt to work with them, I set up 4 activities. I managed to do so and in my panel I had the selector widget where I could chose all 4 of them. I gave each one a different desktop background with only the icons belonging to the group the activity stands for: multimedia, graphics, office and I still had my normal one with all the icons I placed on the desktop.
Also I have the activities-manager widget.

Now I boot again and I only see my standard activity with all icons on the desktop. In the panel I see one square in the selector indicating there is only one present. Clicking the activities-manager shows me one with picture (the standard one) and three lines of text showing the three activities made after starting to use them. Clicking each one in the manager opens the correct one, adding an extra square to the selector in the panel.

Am I forgetting something or is this a bug? Why don’t I see all activities like I expected? Why do I need to click them one by one in the manager to open them and “add” them again to the selector?
Btw, with one this does not work. In the manager it is categorized under Stopped activities. I can’t click the name of it in the manager to make it appear.

I hope I described it a bit clear to you all, English is not my first language.

#2

Neither (I think).

Yes, this is a change from KDE 4.

My experience: I create a new activity, and all is fine.

I logout (or reboot), then login again. That new activity is not started. So I click on it to start it and switch to it.

Thereafter, if I logout and login again, the new activity is now automatically started.

So it seems that you have to tell the system about the activity twice before it takes you seriously.

#3

I did what you wrote and now it seems to work. The one I created new since I could not open it before was mentioned in the manager and by clicking it, it now opened. Hope it will do that automatically the next time I log in.
Thank you for your fast answer.

#4

Okay, things are working now as they should. At the moment 5 activities, each with its own desktop, background and icons like I used to have on my virtual desktops. I really don’t see the fuzz which is going on about not being able to use virtual desktops anymore the way they were used. Activities just takes over and it works great.

#5

LOL, I lost the plot of the fuzz as well when trying to do what you did here. It simply works.

#6

I’m glad to hear it.

And a note to Knurpht: By “fuzz”, I’m pretty sure that he means the whining of some folk about the loss of ability to have different wallpaper on each workspace. The OP is successfully using “activities” as an alternative, which is what people have been suggesting.

#7

Things work best with both fully functional virtual desktops and activities.

Say I’m a manager and supervise multiple complex projects. Each project requires different tool sets. So I set up an activity for each projects and a virtual desktop for each sub project for each activity. This works great in KDE4 it totally broken in Plasma 5

Also activities are a bit more of a pain to change to the virtual desktops and not having different back grounds makes it impossible to know where you are.

If your needs are simple yes you can substitute Activities for VD with just a bit of extra work on switching, but if you have more complex needs Plasma5 is hopelessly broken

#8

Couldn’t have said it any better myself.

On the other hand, what gogalthorp writes is true of course. When you use activities to separate projects and per project you have sub-projects then having activities and virtual desktops which you can set the way you want to (and which you were used to set in KDE4) then not having the possibilities to have different icons and backgrounds per desktop is a loss.
I don’t go that far, I just had a couple of desktops and now I have a couple of activities showing the same result.
Can’t find it anymore but I did read somewhere people are working on restoring the old virtual desktops again, so gogalthorp, maybe there is still hope.

#9

You lost me Knurpht when you wrote: as well when trying to do what you did here. It simply works.
What works for you?

#10

I never understood the case for Activities quite well.

When I realy need to separate different kinds of work (say my personal things like banking, etc. on oone side and being secretary of an association on the other side), I create two different users. Not only bceause I can adapt the two desktop environments to the different needs, but the bonus (well, in fact the most important thing) is that files, etc are save from the other user.

But that is of course my personal feeling about it. And maybe did not realy study Activities well enough. OTOH why sould I study features that I am not missing? As an end-user. i am rather neutral to new features as long as they do not hinder my way of working. But I do not like it when my way of working becomes impossible from one moment to the other. It maybe a buildin problem of open source. It is nicer to build something new, then to garantee and maintain existing things.