Bug 171092

Summary: wish: Saved session editor at least as feature-rich as GNOME's
Product: [Unmaintained] kcontrol Reporter: Stephan Sokolow <kde_bugzilla_2>
Component: kcmsmserverAssignee: Lubos Lunak <l.lunak>
Status: RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED    
Severity: wishlist    
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 3.5   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Compiled Sources   
OS: Unspecified   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Stephan Sokolow 2008-09-15 08:06:49 UTC 
Version:            (using KDE 3.5.9)
Installed from:    Compiled From Sources

I'd like to suggest a GNOME-like session-editing/creating GUI for the ksmserver control module... ideally with additions to ksmserver itself to allow:
- switching sessions without logging out and logging in
- marking certain processes (like Kopete or a torrent client) as persistent so they won't be killed during a session switch.

That way, I could have a couple of dozen-tab Konqueror windows, a few gVim instances, and whatever else open and simply file them away to be resumed later when it's time to stop playing and start working. (I have distractibility problems) In essence, using the session manager to quickly whip up ad-hoc development environments by bundling together whatever applications are appropriate and providing a centralized way to save and restore state across reboots or task-switches. (eg. fun programming vs. procrastination-prone coursework)

I've always found it odd that KDE's session manager GUI is so simplistic and feature-poor that you'd think it'd do better in GNOME while GNOME's is so feature-rich and configurable that you'd expect to find it in KDE.

Not only that, but the approach KDE takes to session management seems flawed in general:
- There's no guarantee that an application is compatible with session management (and no way to tell without logging out, logging in, and seeing if it comes back)
- Things like Klipper ask "Should I start automatically?" when you exit them without giving a "preserve existing behaviour" or "don't ask again" option.

I don't consider "log out and lose your current session, log in to restore your usual manually-saved state, change, and save a new state manually" to be an efficient method of editing manually-saved sessions... especially when there's no way to save my Konqueror session without overwriting the one I want to restore and change. (I'm a big fan of browser-internal session saving)

As it is, I've just been using "Always use a blank session" along with ~/.kde/Autostart since, ironically and worryingly, it works better than the session saver for the limited functionality ksmserver offers.
Comment 1 Andrew Crouthamel 2018-09-04 18:09:42 UTC 
Hello! Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this project has been unmaintained for many years so I am closing this bug. Kcontrol has been replaced by System Settings in Plasma. Please give the latest version of that a try, and open a new bug in "systemsettings" if you continue to have an issue. Thank you!
Comment 2 Stephan Sokolow 2018-09-04 18:19:45 UTC 
To be honest, this sort of "leave reports unaddressed for a decade, then suddenly require the reporter to re-test and re-file large numbers of them" behaviour is extremely demoralizing and that's half of the problem with what Jamie Zawinski famously called "the Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers model".

(The other half being all of the feature and bug regressions that accompany every new x.0 release of KDE or GNOME.)

I've taken to writing my own aftermarket hacks to implement solutions, independent of DEs, because it's become clear that, for any feature KDE or GNOME developers don't personally need, the only developer/maintainer I can trust is myself.
Comment 3 Stephan Sokolow 2018-09-04 18:21:26 UTC 
...oh, and it's given me a pretty strong impression that reporting bugs or deficiencies in KDE is just a waste of time I could spend getting a head start on working around them, rather than waiting for a fix that'll never come.