KDE 4.8: current activity not restored

Today it’s happened again… I’ve turned on the pc and… surprise! Empty desktop, no icons on it. >:(

I’m one of the fews that doesn’t like/need KDE activities. I’ve looked at docs, video, but activities are completely useless in my opinion.
More than this, every time I start the PC the unique activities I use (Desktop Icons) was never displayed at the startup; always the standard “empty” desktop activities was displayed. >:(

So, every time I use the pc, I have to recall the activity list, click on my preferred “Desktop icons” and start working. Obviously, this was a really annoying and frustrating way to use the PC.
Since I’ve not found any easy way to disable kde-activities, I have invented my own solution, I thought “…if I cancel all of the activities but the Desktop icons one, there is no way that KDE will show me another activity with no icons at startup”.

This has worked good, now I have only one activity in the activity list. But today… again no icons on the desktop.
To see again my icons I have done what follows:

  1. I have recalled the activity list;
  2. created an activity called “foo”;
  3. clicked on that activity;
  4. recalled the activity list;
  5. clicked on “Desktop Icons”;
  6. recalled again the activity list;
  7. removed the foo activity.
  8. :?

To summarize, was necessary to create a foo activty only to be be able to click-back on my preferred one (“Desktop Icons”).

It’s happening to somebody else that KDE “forget” the last activity used when you shoutdown the PC?
Is there any definitive way to disable the “activities” useless-annoying-frippertronic feature from KDE?

I think sessions should be correctly saved. Here my settings:

http://i49.tinypic.com/280l6ys.png

Nobody knows how to force KDE to use always the same (unique) activity?

I’m really bored to start the PC and see the empty desktop (with no icons), switch to a fake activity and then switch back again to “Desktop icons” activity.

This make me so nervous >:(
heeeeelp!

so if you click on the activities icon you only have one activity listed?

perhaps try right clicking on your desktop and select default desktop settings and change from default desktop to *folder view.
*
or failing that - create a new activity (probably an empty desktop) and set it up as you like and then delete your old activity.

I will try your suggestions soon.
(As I remember the desktop is set on “Folder view”, but I will check that)

When I right-click on the desktop I cannot see any item named “Default desktop settings”. This is what is displayed:

http://i50.tinypic.com/33jn512.png

So it seems yet set to “Folder view” (by the way, I remember I’ve done that many months ago, but I don’t remember how… do you?).
To respond to your email I’ve started the new PC and… all icons was at their place… grrrr! KDE it’s going to make me crazy.

Ok… I have to unlock widgets, anyway the desktop is using a Folder View and the view is pointing to the desktop directory:

http://i46.tinypic.com/2lw6ik6.png

http://i45.tinypic.com/zlbtx.png

But, but, but… as I see, there are a lot of people having troubles with this crappy interface. Google it and you will see.
Randomly, I’ve read a post of a guy having a similar problem: no desktop icons + a vertical scrollbar displayed on the right. Now I remember that useless scrollbar too!
If you read here http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=107905 you will see why this happens… it’s a bug! >:(

The bug is listed here https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=294795 (wow! A lot of people with this problem, why nobody has reported it here in the openSUSE forum before me???)

I’m really astonished, I cannot find any justifications to a so buggy behaviour of KDE. More than this, I’m surprised that the openSUSE distribution contains a so buggy GUI (google again and you will find many many other bugs).

Why people design so cool and useless interfaces? Only to say “Hey! we’re more cool than the iPad!”
I really don’t understand… maybe I’m becoming too much old! :slight_smile:

p.s: even this forum editor is buggy. I’ve posted 3 images (see previous post) plus 2 links and… the editor said that there was an error “5 images posted, maximum allowed is 4”. So I’ve copied the link to the bug here rotfl!.

Yesterday, KDE started normally, this evening… again. No icons and a scrollbar on the right.

After reading all of the 177 comments associated with the bug I have understood only one thing: there is no solution, even upgrading to 4.9 has no effect.
Now I will try to resize the bottom panel to 80% of maximum size as workaround. I will keep you informed if that works.

well that was a bit of a rant.
In case you aren’t aware - almost all software has bugs (inlcuding ios on the ipad).
I wouldn’t say I find KDE any more buggy than most other software (but it is certainly not bug free of course).

The important thing here is that it is an acknowledged bug and is being worked on.
The problem with the bug is that it is not particularly widespread (despite what you suggest) and the current folder view developer is not able to reproduce the bug so is reliant on information from those who do experience it.

In the meantime, if folder view is causing you so much anxiety why not try desktop view.

I agree wth you, I develop software to pay my rent. Believe me, I understand the nightmare behind a bug.
That said, I honestly should add that if I produce a so evident, visible, annoying bug, my boss will kick me in the ass in 5 minutes and I can say bye bye to my job, my flat and my health insurance.
Ok, we are in the open-source world, I understand that. But at the same time I’m still impressed from no professional behaviours.

Maybe here there is a misunderstanding, if you look better to the bug link Ithink that you can agree with me.
Check when the bug was posted: 2th February, 2012 (1 year ago!!!)
Check the status: CONFIRMED (not in progress - nobody is working on it!)
Check the number of voters: 312 !! (think to all people that have no time to report the bug, or even the ones that knows nothing about that site)
Check the message by Flavio: error was occurring on KDE 4.7 and 4.9 (if you read the post you will discover that occurs on 4.9 too)

So maybe now you can get a better vision about the problem.

For what above, I don’t think so.

Now I will try the workaround I wrote in my previous post, after I will try to migrate to desktop view even if I don’t like.

I like the openSUSE distribution but at the same time I’m little disappointed 'cause after upgrading from 11.x to 12.x I was in some way “forced” to adopt Gnome 3 and/or KDE 4.8 that are both orrible interfaces. Please, be aware that I’m not alone on this, a guy called Linus Torvalds is really less diplomatic than me.
I’m not angry with you, I’m angry with guys that have decided that the new openSUSE distribution should carry on that useless interfaces.

Anyway, that’s life. I have to survive to KDE plasma interface… what can I do? :slight_smile:
Thanks for your suggestion, you’re the only one that has responded on this thread.

comment 263 dated 11 Feb 2013 from the assigned person

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=294795#c263

OK, I think I need to clarify the situation with this bug.First of all, I am not able to reproduce the bug when building folderview and the whole of kde from trunk. Second, I have not been able to reproduce the bug with none of 4.8, 4.9. 4.10 binary. At the same time, people report the bug for all the 3 releases I’ve just mentioned. Also, the folderview code regarding scrollbars and desktop geometry change handling has not been changed since 4.8 for sure, and probably it has not been changed since long before 4.8.The only chance for me to fix the bug is to come to Akademy and use Iacopo’s offer to debug the issue on his laptop, where the bug manifests itself reliably.

Well, this guy (Ignat Semenov) seems in big difficulties. Has started working on the bug more than 1 year ago, has produced some patches (not working) and now (14 February, 2013!) he said that the only way to reproduce the bug is to connect in VPN the with italian guy and see his PC directly.

mmmh… for me is quite incredible that he cannot reproduce the bug… we will see.
Anyway, I still think that 12 months to solve an evident bug is quite “scandalous”. :open_mouth:
I will stay tuned on this.

well this is obviously where the problem lies and why it is taking so long to troubleshoot.
Most people who use folder view do not experience this bug - but it is obviously being experienced by some people - and it is not clear why some experience it while the majority do not.

I do not know if it might help but i also have the bug…
To reproduce the bug listed up here you HAVE to have some icon on the desktop or something in the desktop folder…
When not using icon or the desktop folder the scroll bar never appeared for me for month of use…
tested on opensuse 12.2 and also linux mint 13 kde
just my 2 cent

Thanks for your 2 cents tardekantaf, now I feel not completely alone in this situation.

So seems also that the bug is appearing when:

a) you just move some icon on the desktop to rearrange the preferred position;
b) you click on the desktop icon to start an application.

For now the workaround of resizing the taskbar (pardon, the lower panel) holds. After 10 restart everything works. But I would wait more before confirming it.
I cross the fingers.