Bug 341143

yes, the feature has been removed and due to the huge problem and added complexity it gave, is not going back.
different workspaces with different containment/wallpaper can be done with activities, and that's what's supported.

>yes, the feature has been removed and due to the huge problem and added complexity it gave, is not going back.

Then close the bug.

With all due respect but, "added complexity" ?? 

Come on guys, this feature is not only a KDE's signature but also present and working fine for many years now. I'm still trying to cope with Activities but sometimes a single image to differentiate every desktop is all you need.

Regards.

As of this moment I still have a different wallpaper on each desktop.  The "different widgets on each desktop" box exists and is checked.  I like it that way.  

Perhaps if that checkbox is being removed, someone can post instructions on how to achieve that effects as easily as possible using activities and not using any other aspects of activities.

I'm also using different wallpapers on each desktop. If that's gone in 5.x I will not migrate.

I keep updated my Kubuntu 15.04 beta with the hope that maybe they change their minds and bring the feature back. So far, I see no evidence nor intention to do it. 

Plasma 5.3 (5.2.95) is still not reflected in the official repos and the snapshot doesnt have any option, checkbox, etc. that allows me to set differents wallpapers without using Activities.

According to Reddit user kbroulik:

> You want a hacky workaround? Sure. There's now a KWindowSystem QML import which gives you access to the number and name, among other windowing system related information, of the current virtual desktop. You could then write a wallpaper plugin in QML (the image wallpaper is just a simple QML file itself) that stores an image URL per virtual desktop. Profit.

So is that possible? Is another wallpaper plugin all it takes?

source: http://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/2z8ric/any_hacky_workarounds_to_get_different_wallpapers/cpq1l6y

I really cannot add something constructive as it is too shocking sad. I hope someone will re-implement it nonetheless. No different wallpapers anymore, no screensavers anymore - for me KDE's desktop isn't feeling comfy anymore :(.

I haven't found activities to be useful so I don't use them. ButI'm just hoping that by using activities in the right way, one can get the same effect as we have now: a set of desktops each with its own wallpaper.  I also use Folder View, so that the same applications show up on each desktop.  Is it possible to achieve that effect with activities, I wonder?  

I'm assuming that this requires using activities in a style not intended by their designers but still possible.  Sorry, KDE wizards, but I'm not getting with this program.

I agree with the above comments the wallpaper per desktop option is wanted. It is the ssecond thing I set up on any new installation (after reverting to classic menus). This was a feature of 3.5. If this feature had been considered at the start then you may have got it right. The fact the effort has been spent trying to shoehorn it back into 4 shows how big the demand for it was. I suspect there was no significant survey of users (not developers) requests for features.

I understand that many (if not all) developers are volunteers doing the work in their spare time but you will only encourage more people to join in and help if the product also caters for there needs and wants.

As others above I don't have a need for different activities but I do use desktop switch all the time and find the different wallpapers useful

Please Please Please reconsider

This drop of two of KDE's highlights is desastrous. No communication before removing this with the users is called «überheblich» in German. This should not happen to a team which writes «Community» on its flag.
I muss both features and can not find any new features to compensate for this. Until a change, I will continue to use 14.04 LTS and 14.10. 15.04 has already been deleted. I will use this partition to try out non-kde-distros. Also, I am convinced, that Mint and other KDE-competitors are soon jumping on the bandwagon to develop such a possibility.
And I tried Activities, but more Desktops is (for me) Miles Better.

I *maybe* could live with not having different wallpapers on different virtual desktops.

But not having different widgets on different virtual desktops kills my productivity. 

Please consider reopening the bug.

Your best bet will be to argue this line with a valid reason.

>different workspaces with different containment/wallpaper can be done with activities, and that's what's supported.

So far the only argument I've seen is "I don't see a reason to use them" which doesn't stand up as a reason when it solves exactly what you're asking for.

Problems and complexity perhaps for Plasma 5, because before I have always used without problems 4 virtual desktops with different wallpapers and plasmoid in each of them. I can easy memorize every desktop with the custom wallpaper and easily remember plasmoids have there. For example on the desktop 4 I have plasmoids to monitoring hardware and system. It is also much easier to interact between desktops than activities. This is not just cosmetic issue, it's about productivity (as Nikola Schnelle said). To me this is one reason to not move to Plasma 5. So I hope this is really resolved.

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #13)
> Your best bet will be to argue this line with a valid reason.
> 
> >different workspaces with different containment/wallpaper can be done with activities, and that's what's supported.
> 
> So far the only argument I've seen is "I don't see a reason to use them"
> which doesn't stand up as a reason when it solves exactly what you're asking
> for.

I'm using  desktops instead of activities because in the desktop pager I can see every open window  and on which workspace it is. I need to have everything visible to not forget something. How do I know which window is open on which activity wihout peaking? I also use the desktop pager to drag windows to other workspaces (that is to regroup when I feel the need for it or need more place in one area - I ofen move windows that way) and I can easily switch to groups of applications with just a move of the mouse wheel. I see all groups and I can interact between them in an easy visible way. And when I use application windows fullscreen I also use the always visible desktop pager to switch between these applications with the wheel.  On every desktop I also have the widgets and a wallpaper that both match the usage of the desktop.
The latter can be accomplished with activity but not the usage, the interaction, the visibilty. I totally agree with YAFU, it is not a cosmetic but a productivity issue, besides that it is a matter of comfort. I just feel as lost on activities as I feel lost with too small icons because of bad eyes - and on virtual desktops without unique wallpapers and widgets.

Thanks, that's the sort of feedback I need.

To summarise

You can't use activies because:
 - there's no pager
 - no scroll on desktop to switch

Therefore it's not a suitable drop in replacement to achieve the same thing.

*** Bug 347015 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #16)
> Thanks, that's the sort of feedback I need.
> 
> To summarise
> 
> You can't use activies because:
>  - there's no pager
>  - no scroll on desktop to switch
> 
> Therefore it's not a suitable drop in replacement to achieve the same thing.

I would add no screen edge "desktop grid" effect for activities.

It would be great if "activity grid" screen edge (hot corner) effect would be available in plasma 5. That way you can easily see all active activities, which window is open on which activity and moving windows from one activity to another would be easy and elegant.

Nikola, this has nothing to do with this bug. We are complaining about missing possibilities to configure each desktop individually.

@David Edmundson, in the next video I show a more complete summary. I also explain some things in the description below the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOLG722muUQ

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #16)
> To summarise
> 
> You can't use activies because:
>  - there's no pager
>  - no scroll on desktop to switch

That's a correct summary for me for not using activities and you can also add the grid as a third reason, as Nikola Schnelle mentioned (I have the desktop overview grid on the bottom screen edge so I quickly can move the mouse some pixel below the pager if I need a bigger overview. Fast access with wheel (over desktop, over pager), instant and permanent  overview (pager, grid), easily moving windows between working groups (pager, grid), that's why I use desktops instead of activities; all is in one layer, all is visible, no unnecessary clicks, minimal mouse/hand/finger movements. 

For me using activities is not "achieving the same thing" compared to desktops. See, let's say I wear sandals because I want to have free toes and heels. And you say that's not supported anymore but you can wear loafers instead, they are a suitable drop in because they also have a sole and you can walk in them and you can even use inserts... I don't need inserts, I need to have free heels... Or when I prefer flip-flops because I can easily slip in and out you cannot recommend sandals because sandals don't allow to slip in and out easily because of the straps ;).

For me the grouping of application windows and moving them on the fly (and back) when I temporarily need an application in another context (e.g. dragging browser with graphics tutorial from internet desktop to gimp desktop, then back to internet desktop) is bundled with having different desktop backgrounds and different widgets on the desktops, matching, supporting and even providing the context. With activities I can only have the application grouping and the wallpapers/widgets (let's call it usage) but not the handling. With desktops I had everything, now only the handling remains but not the usage. For productivity reasons you cannot separate both. Different users have different preferred working methods (apart from feeling well requirements).

I am also strongly against this decision. Whilst plasma5 seems to be an improvement in some regards, not having multiple widgets/wallpapers per desktop is one of those things that 
a) Is easy to use
b) Is inituitive.
c) Adds a level of "finesse" to the desktop that makes using it more enjoyable. 

Personally, I can say that the reason that I started using kde4 was that at the time, it allowed transparent wallpapers that allowed compiz to draw multiple wallpapers on different workspaces. If gnome were to support a desktop cube with multiple wallpapers, I would consider switching to it. I suspect that I am not the only one that values a "nice-looking" desktop. 

Window and desktop management are what is important to me in KDE. KWin seems to finally have gotten its act together. It does everything that I want from it (Except for the fact that keyboard-shortcuts still cannot be triggered by mouse events). Plasma4 seemed to work quite well too. However, the fact that Plasma5 does not allow desktop wallpapers makes my desktop far more boring than it used to be. This is not something critical in the sense that it prevents actual work being done (except for when it causes posts like this one whining about it to be written), but given that the reason I use plasma is that it makes my desktop cooler (and easier to use), the fact that now my desktop is more boring than it used to be is more significant that it seems. 

Now, as for the question of why activities are not (yet) a replacement for virtual desktops. 

1 - They do not allow a way of switching between them that shows all activities and open windows (as far as I know). Having something like this is essential for being able to work on multiple things at once. There is also the psychological factor of "windows simply disappearing" when switching between activities. Maybe it's just me, but to me the fact that virtual desktops can be put onto a "grid" or a "cube" makes me feel like I know where the windows actually "are". Of course, this is completely illogical given that it shouldn't matter how windows disappear of the screen, but the fact that I do not know where my wind wows "are" when switching between activities and I have no way of getting an overview as to which windows are where makes it much more comfortable to use workspaces instead of activities, as I like the illusion of the windows "existing" somewhere in 3d space. 

2 - The aesthetic factor. Workspaces have a lot of kwin niceness that activities don't. Switching between workspaces with the cube plugin just looks nice. It's how a desktop *should* look. A lot of work has gone into making plasma look nice. So I don't think this is something only I care about. Of course, there is not reason why activities couldn't get the same kind of treatment. It shouldn't be too hard to create a compositor for activities that allows you to switch between them using a cube animation (though please not some stupid hack that simply takes a picture of the activity and then applies some sort of transformations to it, those days should be long gone). With this goes the fact that changing between activities is very fast, so fast that the closing of all windows in between etc... makes it feel abrupt for me, which is distracting.

3 - Moving windows between activities. Now this goes with point (2). There exists a way to move a window to a different activity. As far as I know, there is no easy keyboard shortcut for this. It doesn't look as nice as e.g. dragging it to a different workspace so one "knows where it is", or having a keyboard shortcut that switches to a different cube side when moving the window. 

Given these points, activities are not (yet) a replacement for virtual desktops. And I think that this might be a design decision in that they *should* not (in someone's opinion) replace virtual desktops given that virtual desktops are by their nature "close" together and very similar, whereas activities (if I understand correctly) should be more "separate". The "separate" paradigm works for those who want to have several things open that they are working on, with these things strictly separate. I, however, want the ability to quickly (and quietly) change between things that I am doing. The fact that changing between virtual desktops using a cube is continuous rather than abrubt makes this transition less forceful for me, even when there are multiple different wallpapers. 


I would have nothing against using "activities" instead of virtual desktops if activities had the features (and polish, including desktop-effects) of virtual desktops. However, given that I do not think that reinventing virtual desktops (I feel like virtual desktops are themselves a reinvention of workspaces) is what the plan is, I feel like allowing people to combine the two concepts would give people the best of both worlds. One could even do something like allowing you to bind activities to virtual desktops. This binding could even be non-injective, allowing e.g. 3 virtual desktops to be used for activity 1 and 2 for activity 2. This would create a way of joining activities, whilst allowing them to remain separate for those who would want that. 

Lastly, I would like to mention that ugly hacks like "make a wallpaper plugin that gets the current workspace from kwin and then use that" defeat the purpose of having multiple wallpapers - having a prettier desktop. I remember hacks like this from the days in which compositors were new.  The discontinuity caused by wallpapers switching is so annoying that it completely invalidates the "niceness" of having multiple wallpapers. The same is generally true of everything that pretends to be a compositor by taking still images and then doing something with them. Please don't go this road with plasma. I have nothing against hacks that work like intended (probably the way this issue was dealt with in plasma4), just against hacks that "almost" achieve their stated purpose but not quite.

Given that I've spent a paragraph ranting about ugly hacks, It seems fitting for me to propose one: allow plasma wallpaper plugins to draw transparent backgrounds, and get kwin to draw wallpapers. Is this something that could work, or are the plasma devs against something like this? The last time this came up they seemed to be against it, arguing that the wallpaper shouldn't be the job of the window manager. Whilst this may be true, I could imagine that something has changed in the plasma5 libraries that could allow such a wallpaper plugin to exist. Does anyone know whether or not this is the case?

For me, having different wallpapers on different virtual desktops was a *great* feature of KDE, as was having different widgets on different virtual desktops. IMO it certainly helped with productivity.
Also these features set KDE apart from the other desktop environments. 

Please consider reopening the bug.

I applaud the decision to reopen this bug.  I just got a new laptop and actually started the installation of 15.04.  But I thought better of it, aborted the installation, and went back to 14.10.  The "different wallpapers" issue was my main reason, although I've discovered other regressions such as the loss of window numbers in the window list widget.

I'm very glad, that you have decided to reopen this Bug and hope, you will fix it in due course.
Thanks for considering our wishes.

Having different widgets on different virtual desktops was very usefull for me so I hope you will bring it back

I'm just about to switch to KF5 (as it becomes more stable), and this issue really stops me.
I've been using this feature since my first Linux DE's.
Please, bring it back!

Over the years I've tried various Linux distros and always gone back to Windows in the end because something was just too difficult, inconvenient or impossible. When I started using KDE 4 I fell in love with it principally because the different widgets/wallpapers on each desktop was so useful, and I have stuck with it. Now I've upgraded, and that's all gone! Activities are no substitute as has been said because of the inability to use the switchers and overviews, etc.

Thank you for reopening this bug.

I have to concur with all the comments, except with the one that this should be included in 'wish-list'. If it was possible in KF4 and not in KF5 it is a bug by omission.

I have to add my name to those that want and NEED multiple wallpapers

I have used KDE for over 10 years, precisely because it offers customization's in easy and seamless ways - Genome always lacked the finesse and was a pain to configure (often using multiple separate tools) .

Virtual Desktop customization as many others have said is a productivity issue.  But larger than that, it is one of the few features that truly distinguishes KDE from other desktops.  Now I see little difference in KDE from any of the other multitude of available desktop options.  I suppose I will be trying out many new desktops now, hopefully one is as beautiful and configurable as KDE used to be.

"But larger than that, it is one of the few features that truly distinguishes KDE from other desktops. Now I see little difference in KDE from any of the other multitude of available desktop options."  +1
I'll also try to install XFCE or LXQt in addition to my current Plasma 5 openSUSE system, just to compare. I loved this KDE 4 feature we're discussing here so much that it's been a long time I've not tried any other DE. I've read somewhere that XFCE would allow different wallpapers at least, will see. If KDE don't have this kind of features anymore, for sure a few desktop environments will offer it soon: nature abhors a vacuum, open-source community too.

My real problem with this issue is that it makes me so much remember the disappearing of Start Menu in windows 8 when the developers forced their users to follow their vision and preferences. 
That's why I like Linux and open-source, because I find in it the freedom state-of-mind that I'll never find in the 2 big companies products, indeed. KDE should keep that state-of-mind up, not just for the users but also for the project to don't see them go, it would be so sad.

At least this ticket has been reopen, it means a lot: there's still some hope :)  
Open your 'chakra' (hihi, name of a KDE distro)... having the choice would be the best, just like KDE 4 I'm sure that you'll find a way to make every kind of uses possible with Plasma 5.

I just tried to upgrade to plasma5  from a kde4 . Based on the discussions it appeared to me that if you apply  plasma5-session + plasma5-workspace + change /etc/configsys/diaplaymanager to sddm ..everything will go as simple like ...... reboot, select plasma5 and .... voila.... plasma5 ! 
Oh ! In my case I got a black screen and no way to go back . 
Lucky of me that I was using a sand-box pc  for this ...... smooth test  .

So, I decided to install a brand new opensuse 13.2 ; Because we were told that  OpenSuSE 13.2 has already plasma5 .... "available"  I used that route ...  : KDE + customize software selection to use 
 plasma5 .  After I selected plasma5, I had a strange sense that something  is not quiet right ..... 
default KDE patterns were gone.   
Finally the install is done,  logon on with plasma5 and voila ...... wait a moment it is not KDE is Genome !!!! 
I was dismayed that everything was ..... GNOME-ish .   Logout, login selecting KDE plasma [ ??? ] and I got something that resemble the good-old-kde .  Trying to reconfigure [ system settings  ]  I got one surprise after another :
1. in some options an icon telling me that the settings stopped, ... restart it . So I told myself .... hey this plasma is more windose than a linux
2. workspace appeareance ...... almost all  goodies from KDE4 are gone .....
3. try multiple desktops ...... no way to handle the desktops differently ..... 
4. try to see if that option was moved somewhere ..... and I got here 
....................
Sad to find out that after using KDE for more than 20 years this KDE "5" upgrade  .... removees all the goodies that has made made KDE famous . 

This is very similar  to what Coke did with its ..... New Coke ....  [ customers unhappy, switches to something else ...] ;  The attempt of coming back to the "Classic Coke" did not solve the initial blunder. 

The developers comments such "yes, the feature has been removed and due to the huge problem and added complexity it gave, is not going back. different workspaces with different containment/wallpaper can be done with activities, and that's what's supported."  is scarry .
It seems that KDE has stopped being open and   has become ..... proprietary . 
If you don't like the "new" KDE ... bad luck .... what you see id what you get !

Sorry KDE guys ..... If you believe that you are the alpha aand the omega in Desktop Management then is better to close your doors ..... your  loyal KDE users will find something else BUT they will never come back .  
So KDE it is time to decide what to do :  design for the users  OR  design for yourselves .

From options point of view, the "new" KDE5 looks like a downgrade of the good-old-KDE4 !
I just started the process to compare other Desktop Managers and decide what to use in the future [ for sure not KDE5 , nor Genome ] 

In the fairness, many thanks to all who created KDE and  nursed it till KDE Plasma 4. 

For the new KDE5 team , I believe that Ecclesiasts:3  will be something to think about .
It seems that for KDE4 the time to die is ...... the release of KDE5 [ aka Gnome-Plasma5 ]
What a Pity !

All the best !


.....
 Ecclesiasts:3 
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 

A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up; 

A time to weep, and a time to laugh
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew;  
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

I have gone back to Kubuntu 14.04 because it's a long-term release and will give me a few years of breathing space.  15.04 as it stands is unacceptable to me because of the lack of different wallpapers on different desktops, plus the weirdness that the window list widget inexplicably doesn't display the window numbers as it does in 14.04.  Kubuntu 14.10 is probably a better system than 14.04, but its support expires this month (7/15).

The situation reminds me of what happened to Windows Vista -- Windows users shunned it, either sticking with XP until that ship took on too much water, or eventually advancing to Windows 7.  Windows 8 has a similar story, though Windows 8.1 made it more acceptable.  Windows 10 is looking pretty good -- although of course it's not Kubuntu.

Adding myself in favor of re-implementing different wallpaper and widgets on each virtual desktop.  I use it for organization.  It is an important feature to me and I'm disappointed to find  it missing from Plasma 5.3 after an upgrade from KDE 4.14.

"But larger than that, it is one of the few features that truly distinguishes KDE from other desktops. Now I see little difference in KDE from any of the other multitude of available desktop options."  +1

I came here to add my voice to the choir of KDE afficinados who won't feel at home on their own machine with separate wallpapers and different widgets on each virtual desktop voided out.

 I built my way of working around those features and I'm not going to drop all that and start from nought. And I don't want to be force fed activities.

Besides, whenever I want to impress someone and showoff how cool it is to run linux and KDE I turn my mousewheel and run the cube animation of very individual desktops, each with it'ss own folderview and other widgets. 

Stripping this from KDE looks like  self-gelding to me.
Fortunately my distro allows me to stay on KDE 4.1x and that's what I will do.
Visiting this bug in intervals to check if the time is right to change.

The title of this bug is actually quite reductive since it involves also the issue of separate widgets per virtual desktop. Since, between different threads, we're actually not so few, I'd suggest to converge all to one thread, either this (but change the title) or #343246.

I link other threads talking about this:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=348493
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=349486
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343246
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155150 (it is quite peculiar that the very same issue happened in KDE3 -> KDE4 migration)

The whole time I've used KDE4 I have had about 4 desktops and one of them has a weather widget on it (called "yawp").. Occasionally I switch to that desktop really fast to see things like temperature or forecast for tomorrow..
But I only need it on one desktop, not all of them.. I don't want it to interfere with my main desktop wallpaper..

If plasma5 is unable to do some thing so basic and integral as remembering which widgets and wallpapers you had on which specific desktops (which plasma4 could do flawlessly) then it almost feels like plasma5 isn't an upgrade, but a downgrade..

Feels like a goldfish is trying to remember my settings, and can only remember only 1 single wallpaper and 1 single set of widgets no matter how many desktops I have (possibly up to 20)..

It is like some one showing you their wardrobe, but when they open their closet, they have 100 of the exact same shirt, 100 of exact same pants, and 100 of the exact same pairs of shoes..
Any one's natural reaction would be "Why the hell are all of your clothes exactly the same??"

You stated months ago, that the question is reopened. WHEN do you have a defintive decision?  Thanks for an answer as soon as possible.

When there's time.

Well, this is really helpful.
Do you really think this is good policy for arguably the worlds best desktop environment, having a feature you close without any common discussion among the users and then when opposition emerges not informing about progress? You make me feel to play the Kohl-trick: no decision and sit it out until it gets forgetten.

I didn't close it in a way that blocked comments. If I had wanted to that, I would have explciitly done so.

If you must know; I brought this up at Akademy. I proposed a solution which would merge the activities and virtual desktops, in a way that solves this giving everyone what they want. 
It wasn't met with a very positive reaction; but I might do it anyway.

If you want this fixed, help triage some of the other bugs, and then we can all get some more time to work on this.

Yes, merging activities and virtual desktop is a good idea.
As a user, I never understood why two such similar concepts exist.

Plasma 5.4 is being "cooked" right now.

Any hope a change could be introduced regarding this issue?

Thank you.

I am holding back on openSUSE 13.1 for now, refusing to upgrade, because I have built my entire workflow around having different widgets and different wallpapers on each desktop, plus on having the cube and the pager, and I am severely irritated by the prospect that I will have to try to redesign my methods of working and then go through a retraining curve on my instinctive and automated methods with the hope I will again reach the level of production I am at now once I am forced into the "new" methods.

My way of working with the desktops is now deeply ingrained.  Changing it now would be the same as if the hardware manufacturers suddenly switched the relative positions of every key on the keyboard and used a unique keyboard connector so that everyone is forced to learn the new positions of the keys.

As a high production touch typist for 45 years, such a move would make me extremely furious.

This issue is about serious production for some of us.

Fix it!

I support Fraser-Bell's words 100%. It is now nearing 8 (eight) month since this bug has been arised. If you are not prepared to fix it really soon and give us a clear indication of finishing that job, you betray a large part of keen KDE supporters and users. 
My last properly working system is now Kubuntu 14.10 which has no support any longer. This is more than just totally unacceptable.

Do you really want a million of users to go back to Windows? Not that it would offer this feature, but of contempt to your behaviour.

Fix it! With all due haste and as a first priority.

(In reply to Arran from comment #47)
> Do you really want a million of users to go back to Windows? Not that it
> would offer this feature, but of contempt to your behaviour.

Just tested Win10 today and was so suprised to see that they've added the multiple desktops feature, so they copy Linux at least on this point. It will not take so much time to find a freeware that will allow scrolling-switch or screen-corner accessible grid.

For sure I will not go back to Windows for sooooo much reasons that will be too long to list here, and Win10 adds some to the list (f***ing M$ store + all the integrated apps that you can't remove without tweaking the whole Earth, for example).

Anyway without the separately managed desktops feature the mess is huge. Ok I follow opinions here about diff wallpapers but the most important for me remains the different widgets on each desktop. I agree everything said here about productivity compared to activities like the desktops grid, scrolling switch, pager, hey guys it's a so cool feature. How can you create such genius things without seeing yourself that it's one of your strength to end-users?

Unfortunately I'm not skilled enough to be admirative on the code lines that KDE teams have optimized here and there, maybe it's wonderful but I can't see it ;)  From my pov even if Plasma5 is less stable, has problems with some (many ?) systray icons, lacks some useful systemsettings menus present in KDE4 but I'm sure everything will be improved. Version 5 is young after all, I could find workaround for most of my issues, and I could be patient before seeing this changes coming, no prob... BUT please give us our so cool KDE desktops back in a hurry! I had to go back from openSUSE Tumbleweed to 13.2 just because of this, even my issues with gcc5 were acceptable compared to the absence of our dear desktops.

No, no way for me to go back to Windows, lol. But I have to admit that I've recently visited the Cinnamon/Mint community websites more than I ever did before. But I still want to believe that those changes will not be planned for 2016 or 2017, even if I very respectfully understand the lack of time from volunteer developers working on their free time. Free time means "nothing else more important to do in real life at that time" and it's as hard to find as gold sometimes ;)

"Do you really want a million of users to go back to Windows?"
Very sorry. Forgotten to say: when you have tasted the open-source, community driven, free and good state-of-mind feelings provided by the Linux project, do you think one second about switching to Windows? Really?
xP

FeniX
No, not really. But as a threat is looks good.

My problem is, I am too dependent on KDE, my bookkeeping is based on KMyMoney, my satellite TV runs with Kaffeine, all my music hangs on Amarok, i am trying to understand KDE's Office Suite to get rid of LibreOffice, I browse about 50% with Rekonq,  my pictures are stored with digiKam, and so on. I am nover 70 and really do not want to start with all this at zero once more.

We here in Scotland learned in the last two years, what peoples power can achieve. The whole «class public» has, or has to, learned to listen to what the people want and not what the politicians want. The result at the last General Election was really telling: from a total of 59 seats in the London Parliament, 56 went to the only party who interacted intensively with the people, the other three parties made each just 1 single seat.

KDE can and must also learn from this lesson, sitting in a glashouse without LISTENING to its clients, users, fans, whatever will lead slowly but surely to a great decline.

Good example. So true.

For many years now, whenever there's a new OS release or a new desktop comes out I try the new desktop, set up multiple desktops, go to set different backgrounds on different desktops, and then switch right back to KDE.

I'm another person who can't understand why we need both features. How about adding a pager for activities, allowing us to switch off the weird animation where the windows appear and then the background slides in behind them, and changing the name to Desktops?

Awesome that this has been reopened.  Thanks for that.  I for one don't want to see multiple desktops and activities merged.  I think multiple desktops is a concept that is simple and intuitive.  Please don't take that simplicity away by making us jump through a bunch of activities hoops.  I assume that the KDE devs like activities (else why would they be there) but there are so many of us users that rely on the virtual desktop system for productivity.  It would be a shame to make this unnecessarily complex just for the sake of combining it wit activities.  Virtual desktops and having different wallpapers/widgets on each should be a standard feature that stands on its own and doesn't need activities for it to be accomplished.  It should just be part of the way the desktop works.

(In reply to Arran from comment #47)
> Do you really want a million of users to go back to Windows? Not that it
> would offer this feature, but of contempt to your behaviour.


Not much of a threat, really.  Most of the Devs, and most Linux users, do not care at all if you -- or I, or anyone else -- "goes back to Windows".  Such threats do not help the objective of trying to get the point across that some of us have our productivity and workflows deeply entangled in this feature and that losing it is a disaster.

We are appealing for help from talented Volunteers who are not making a fortune through sales of this free product.

We simply need them to understand that this is no small "bug" to us, but is instead a huge problem and a severe kick backwards with KDE.

(In reply to Danny Tamez from comment #53)
> ... I for one don't want
> to see multiple desktops and activities merged. 

I agree.  Keep the separate widgets & backgrounds feature in desktops for those who prefer it.

There are also many who like activities, so keep that for those who want it.

That will take KDE back to the "Freedom" it spouts on the home page.

What if we got rid of virtual dsktops entirely, replaced them with activities.  Put activities in pager, and make screen borders switch activities, along with all "desktop switch" animations.  Would this work?  Is it even feasible?

(In reply to Danny Tamez from comment #53)
> Awesome that this has been reopened.  Thanks for that.  I for one don't want
> to see multiple desktops and activities merged.  I think multiple desktops
> is a concept that is simple and intuitive.  Please don't take that
> simplicity away by making us jump through a bunch of activities hoops.  I
> assume that the KDE devs like activities (else why would they be there) but
> there are so many of us users that rely on the virtual desktop system for
> productivity.  It would be a shame to make this unnecessarily complex just
> for the sake of combining it wit activities.  Virtual desktops and having
> different wallpapers/widgets on each should be a standard feature that
> stands on its own and doesn't need activities for it to be accomplished.  It
> should just be part of the way the desktop works.

How very true.

I endorse the comments others have made, and deplore the decision to reduce the capabilities of Plasma 5 by dropping a useful and popular facility.

I find multiple desktops with varied characteristics simple and intuitive to use, and am less happy with activities.

I ask that they be allowed to coexist, or to be merged in a way that allows the best features of both to be accessible.

This is the single issue that has kept me from switching to plasma5
Activities are NOT the same as virtual desktops.

I look forward to once again being able to tell everyone once again  that KDE is the desktop that allows users to work the way they want.

At least the powers that be have reopened this bug.   Does anyone here have a sense of what it would take to get our "different wallpapers" back?

Code wise:
Main class in ShellCorona
plasma/workspace/shell/corona.cpp has a list of containments

this class takes that list and puts the right one on the right screen/activitiy

Currently there's a multi layered map with screen -> activity -> containemnt

this needs to become screen -> activity-> VD -> containment

Containment.cpp needs to track number of virtual desktops changing and delete views / create views / create containments as appropriate.

DesktopView.cpp is to be on all Virtual Desktops. That would need turning off, but that's a one liner.

That's currently super tricky as that class is super fragile; it's all based around QScreen which we want, yet we needed to get a signal that was broken in QScreen so it's a combo of two different screen managements systems - which get updates are out of sync \o/ 

We've fixed that in Qt , but we're not getting that till Qt 5.6.  Then that class can half in size.

Dashboard would probably need some tweaking.


Politics Wise:
One dev says he doesn't want this feature saying "activities cover it" which I would agree with if we made an effort on making activities not suck.

Personally, I want to kill activities and virtual desktops being two separate things as right now it's a mess. Taking the best of both.  Not everyone is on board, and I don't want to just pull rank.... but dunno

Also please stop wtih the "me too comments", especially the snarky ones. That'll just put anyone off from working on it.

Thank you David for the thorough explanation and thanks to you and other devs for your work.

The activities as a task-driven way of customizing your workspace can be useful but I am not convinced of them being a container for many identical VDs and that you switch the whole activity with another one.

Probably this already came up, but this concept is the one that for me seems reasonable:

Activity as a one-desktop setup, which it actually currently mostly is: you can customize bg, widgets, folder and other things, just like now. You do not have VDs inside an activity. Instead, VDs are orthogonal containers and you can attach and change activities per each VD. So you can have N VDs, and attach and switch activities on each one separately. So you can end up with some VDs being same activity, and others being different. You can add new VDs or delete them as needed. It would be like having a variable (horizontal) stripe of VDs and each VD showing one element of the (vertical) stripe of activities

what do you think?

Thank you,
Loop

I am happy to see this bug re-open. Having removed the capacity to have different plasmoid on different desktop has a funny effect in plasma5 that the dashboard is ... totally useless since it is not possible to put any plasmoid on it (at least not different that the one on the desktop).

I didn't like the activity as it was presented for plasma5 because it was just the same way than gnome is presenting their own activity so why using a half backed system which will be a copy of another one more stable and more mature?

I am waiting for this feature to be back and also to have the panel to be recover by a window  (and rise correctly) before leaving kde4.  

Thanks to try to keep our beloved KDE as it is : different.

Plasma 5.4 is released and no changes, no news :(

Please allow for different widgets / desktop wallpapers (per the original bug description) for Plasma 5. I would not have installed Plasma 5 if I had known about this in advance. Now I have to uninstall this and reinstall KDE 4. 

This is a productivity feature and the sole reason why I prefer KDE to any other DE. I use the same computer for work, play, uni, and creativity,  etc. For work I set a folder view to my work folder and it has neutral (non-offensive or distracting, e.g., muted colours) wallpapers. My netbook uses a netbook view on my main virtual desktop and a desktop view for my transparent terminal virtual desktop, my school desktop is a folder view linked to my uni files and a terminal window and links to the apps I use for school, and my play folder is a desktop view with my "fun" wallpapers and widgets for music/video etc. My set up allows me to focus easily when I need to and to only have to customise my desktops once.  I have tried activities before and I find them unintuitive and a bit of a time vampire. 

I think Plasma 5 looks great and I look forward to using it in the future. I hope that the dev team will be able to restore this feature. Now off to uninstall.

just one question: Will they include otion: different graphical components for each desktop ?. I do not speak of activities. I wonder if I have to go looking for another desk. (simply say that is my favorite KDE desktop and use from KDE 1 but need that option).

PS: I am not speaking Spanish and English, translators use.

Thank you

@Diego, comment 66: If you find another desktop environment with that feature please share. But i guess you won't, that was, besides the gazillion configuration options (alas a lot of them gone too) THE feature of the KDE desktop, the one that made this desktop environement really outstanding. Therefore I really hope it will be reimplemented because Plasma 5 is still a nice desktop environment though not that outstanding anymore.

@Comment 56: That would mean activities would become virtual desktops ;). Fine for me, if they behave like virtual desktops I don't care about the name. I just want to have different wallpapers and different widgets for my virtual desktops and maybe a different set of widgets for the dashboard (which for me is useless without a different widget set) and I just wan to switch between those virtual whatsovevers with a slight move of the mouse wheel over the desktop and over the pager and I also want to move windows from desktop to desktop via the pager.

@Jane, I know no other desktop as good as KDE, so I use it because for me it is the best, and I am using it since the first version, what happens is that Plasma five are several steps back.

I use different funds for different things and different on every desk widge.

I do not understand is how KDE remove things and ignore what users need. We are asking them to return these features and see how plasma 5 pull version new but not returning the two options that all claim (funds from various desktop and widge disitntos on every desk) say they give a lot of mistakes, because in my case I assure you it works very well and I have no problems.

I'm really looking forward is to return these options. And if they do not return anyone to take a fork of KDE 4. It's that simple.

It is a pity that KDE ignore the needs of their users, whether to the best of us forget that we move from KDE and seek another option.
I do not think what others use me for that already imposed are other software companies.

We only ask to rejoin those options. but I ask is that we are clear and meet us: they will re-incorporate or will move us? because the life of KDE 4 has an expiration date.

Regards.

I would really like the different wallpaper/widgets per virtual desktop, and I do use Activities a lot - they are just different things.

In my work, it is common to have several visualization tasks, related to different projects. I also very often need to have Eclipse IDE and SQL client windows. Having all of these on the same screen just does not work, and I used to have several different virtual desktops, one for the queries, one for the development, one for the results and another for the servers terminal windows. Different widgets, icons and similars were common for me at each virtual desktop.

That was my configuration for one activity, and then I'd have several different activies for different stacks, and a separate activity for stuff like email, messengers, etc.

The whole thing would have over 20 different screens, and having each with its own look and customized widgets was a major productivity booster, as I configured shortcuts for very quickly navigating between desktops and activities. With this design decision, all this is gone now. I don't see how I could do that with only activities or only virtual desktops. The major thing which made me choose KDE was that it had both. That is now gone for me, and I don't know if I'll stick around Kubuntu anymore if it does not come back.

Created attachment 94828 [details]
Highlight current desktop in Virtual Desktop Pager

I use virtual desktops because they are reliable, have just enough features but not too much, and they are really easy to setup and use. To maneuver I use the mouse wheel (Vertical-Scroll).  I have the Virtual Desktop Pager in a Panel on the lower right-hand corner with "Shows Desktop" enabled.

The main reason I use different desktop wallpaper is to quickly identify which desktop I am  currently on... without further action or thought. This could also be achieved if the Virtual Desktop Pager distinguished the *current* desktop from all others, perhaps with a customizable background color. For example, please see the image virtual-desktop-pager.jpg.

Whichever desktop is returned by "qdbus org.kde.kwin /KWin currentDesktop", the Pager would visually indicate it is the current desktop that is being viewed on the screen. Currently if no application is running on any desktop or applications are minimized all Virtual Desktops on the Virtual Desktop Pager look the same.

I'll throw my 2 cents worth as a general FYI.
Like many people here, I (and my coworkers) kept using KDE 4.1X due to missing KDE 5.x feature (This issue, chief among them).
In the last couple of weeks we moved the bulk of the KDE 4.12 machines to KDE 5.4 (due to Fedora 21's pending EOL), moving many users to activities.

On the up side, once you get used to it, activities behave more-or-less like v.desktops, its fairly easy to setup different widgets/wallpapers per activity and keyboard switching is fairly easy..
On the down side, activity switching is measurably slower than v.desktop switching and the lack of activity pager is a *major* pain in the back side.

All in all, activities is an acceptable alternative to "different wallpaper/widgets per v.desktop".

(In reply to Gilboa Davara from comment #71)
> On the down side, activity switching is measurably slower than v.desktop
> switching and the lack of activity pager is a *major* pain in the back side.

Exactly.
 
> All in all, activities is an acceptable alternative to "different
> wallpaper/widgets per v.desktop".

Without pager, and without automatic session restore (automatic native app restart, even when app versions increase after updates), and with the littering of its config files directly in ~/.config (rather than ~/.config/ksomething-or-other), no, it's not. And, the whole of K*5 is an immensely slower and bigger resource consumer than KDE3 and TDE.

(In reply to Gilboa Davara from comment #71)
> I'll throw my 2 cents worth as a general FYI.
> Like many people here, I (and my coworkers) kept using KDE 4.1X due to
> missing KDE 5.x feature (This issue, chief among them).
> In the last couple of weeks we moved the bulk of the KDE 4.12 machines to
> KDE 5.4 (due to Fedora 21's pending EOL), moving many users to activities.
> 
> On the up side, once you get used to it, activities behave more-or-less like
> v.desktops, its fairly easy to setup different widgets/wallpapers per
> activity and keyboard switching is fairly easy..
> On the down side, activity switching is measurably slower than v.desktop
> switching and the lack of activity pager is a *major* pain in the back side.
> 
> All in all, activities is an acceptable alternative to "different
> wallpaper/widgets per v.desktop".

I'm glad that it is working our for you (aside from the *major* pain you mentioned).  I have not been able to make that switch and respectfully disagree that it is an acceptable alternative. I've tried activities many times and it's just not as elegant, quick, useful or flexible for me and the way I work.  And without the different wallpapers and widgets I find I end up using  fewer desktops and everything ends up crowded or lost.  
I'm still holding out hope as the bug has been reopened.  Maybe there is a chance we'll get this great feature back - I sure hope so!  Without it I feel like I'm using one of those other operating systems I've always felt sorry for since they were missing out on all these cool features.

Here we are again calling options include: graphics components other on every desk.

Not to mention activities, we know that are wonderful for some.
But for many users it is wonderful: graphics components other on every desk.

Just hopefully incorporate again we ask, "different graphics components on every desk" we are many users who demand this option.

Different  Wallpaper on every desktop!!!!!!!!!!!
+1

(In reply to Gilboa Davara from comment #71)
> On the up side, once you get used to it, activities behave more-or-less like
> v.desktops, its fairly easy to setup different widgets/wallpapers per
> activity and keyboard switching is fairly easy..
> On the down side, activity switching is measurably slower than v.desktop
> switching and the lack of activity pager is a *major* pain in the back side.

If you feel like experimenting (and can build stuff) you can try
https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=scratch%2Fmart%2Factivitypager.git
it's just that: a pager that uses activities

(In reply to Marco Martin from comment #76)
> (In reply to Gilboa Davara from comment #71)
> > On the up side, once you get used to it, activities behave more-or-less like
> > v.desktops, its fairly easy to setup different widgets/wallpapers per
> > activity and keyboard switching is fairly easy..
> > On the down side, activity switching is measurably slower than v.desktop
> > switching and the lack of activity pager is a *major* pain in the back side.
> 
> If you feel like experimenting (and can build stuff) you can try
> https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=scratch%2Fmart%2Factivitypager.git
> it's just that: a pager that uses activities

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

- Gilboa

Different Wallpapers and widgets per virtual desktop is a feature I used rather heavily on kde4.
Switching virtual desktops is one of the easiest ways to switch between arrangements of a few windows, if you have a small screen. I usually used the wallpaper as a hint, on which desktop I currently was and would use one desktop with a few folder views to open files and a different desktop, if I was compiling one of these projects and entertaining myself, while keeping a watch on cpu and ram usage as well as the compilation output via widgets. I really liked this setup and activities are not really a solution to this. I can use those, if I want to switch to a different workflow, like graphics editing, gaming or browsing. Virtual desktops are more about arranging my windows. Nonetheless are different widgets and especially different wallpapers a useful feature, that I really miss.
If someone makes the effort and implements it, I will really be grateful!

On Friday evening one of my best friends visited me. One and a half year ago he changed the PCs of his family with my help from MS Windows to OpenSuSE 13.1/KDE like  ca. 20 friends of me did too in the last 2 years. He asked me, if it would be difficult to upgrade the Distro when the support for OS 13.1 will stop.
Therefor yesterday I decided to take a first look at the new OpenSuSE 42.1 beta Version. After installation everything seemed to be ok. But then I tried to setup my different desktops like I always do and recognized the missing of "different widgets.../unterschiedliche Miniprogramme...". After asking Googgle about this I read in several threads that it should be a WONTFIX. This really shocked me, because this feature is my primary reason for using KDE. And not only for me. Half of the persons from above made their decision because of watching me working with the different desktops/workspaces.  
Later I phoned some of my friends and told them about it. They were not less shocked like me and asked me what to do. I told them that it would be enough time until the support for the KDE 4 versions will end. Enough time for me to create a (perhaps xfce-based) workaround, if the developers of KDE won't change their decision to delete this feature. It would mean, like we say in german: KDE ade!
Please, my dear KDE-Developers: Think, what you are trying to do to us! Please, think!

P.S. The activity-feature won't be a solution for me and the others. It's usefull for SmartPhones but not for the PC-Desktop. Never!

(In reply to Marco Martin from comment #76)
> (In reply to Gilboa Davara from comment #71)
> > On the up side, once you get used to it, activities behave more-or-less like
> > v.desktops, its fairly easy to setup different widgets/wallpapers per
> > activity and keyboard switching is fairly easy..
> > On the down side, activity switching is measurably slower than v.desktop
> > switching and the lack of activity pager is a *major* pain in the back side.
> 
> If you feel like experimenting (and can build stuff) you can try
> https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=scratch%2Fmart%2Factivitypager.git
> it's just that: a pager that uses activities

i 've tried it   and it's  working.
Is it easy to implement  number of rows and effect switching  like  vd pager ?
Thanks.

> i 've tried it   and it's  working.
> Is it easy to implement  number of rows and effect switching  like  vd pager
> ?
> Thanks.
Number of rows should be easily implementable, a switching effect is instead a bit more difficult/less likely

Hello, I am disappointed that the team kde is removed the ability to have a wallpaper workspace because by this customization allows memorizing easier location of open windows. 

I personally use four virtual desktops associated with 4 wallpapers representing each of the 4 seasons; so I can open kontact in spring, summer dolphin etc. 

The removal of this possibility seems to me to be a regression that will complicate my life and for the first time since I left w ****** for linux.

I think it would be better to delete the dashboard which seems to be of no utility. Perhaps the dashboard of Gnome Shell could inspired changes to Plasma5: a new dashboard, providing a tab "workspaces" showing a stack of virtual desktops and a statement of the open windows on the current desktop and an "activity" tab, could improved man-machine interface and user productivity ?

I hope soon regain the ability to customize my interface a little better, because I remain very attached to kde, and I should be sorry that it continued to move in the wrong direction as to convert me to the worship of Gnome!

regards
Olivier

Hello, I am disappointed that the team kde has removed the ability to have a wallpaper per workspace because by this customization allows memorizing easier location of open windows. 

I personally use four virtual desktops associated with 4 wallpapers representing each of the 4 seasons; so I can open kontact in spring, dolphin in summer etc...For me it is a simple and elegant mnemonic way to use many windows on multiple virtual desktops.

The removal of this possibility seems to me to be a regression that will complicate my life and this for the first time since I left w ****** for linux.

I think it would be better to delete the dashboard which seems to be of no utility. 

Perhaps the dashboard of Gnome Shell could inspired changes to Plasma5: a new dashboard, providing a tab "workspaces" showing a stack of virtual desktops and a statement of the open windows on the current desktop and an "activity" tab, could improved man-machine interface and user productivity ?

I hope soon regain the ability to customize my interface a little better, because I remain very attached to kde, and I should be sorry that it continued to move in the wrong direction as to convert me to the worship of Gnome!

regards
Olivier

Hello, I am disappointed that the team kde has removed the ability to have a wallpaper per workspace because by this customization allows memorizing easier location of open windows. 

I personally use four virtual desktops associated with 4 wallpapers representing each of the 4 seasons; so I can open kontact in spring, dolphin in summer etc...For me it is a simple and elegant mnemonic way to use many windows on multiple virtual desktops.

The removal of this possibility seems to me to be a regression that will complicate my life and this for the first time since I left w ****** for linux.

I think it would be better to delete the dashboard which seems to be of no utility. 

Perhaps the dashboard of Gnome Shell could inspired changes to Plasma5: a new dashboard, providing a tab "workspaces" showing a stack of virtual desktops and a statement of the open windows on the current desktop and an "activity" tab, could improved man-machine interface and user productivity ?

I hope soon regain the ability to customize my interface a little better, because I remain very attached to kde, and I should be sorry that it continued to move in the wrong direction as to convert me to the worship of Gnome!

regards
Olivier

(In reply to Olivier BELLEUX from comment #84)
> Hello, I am disappointed that the team kde has removed the ability to have a
> wallpaper per workspace because by this customization allows memorizing
> easier location of open windows. 
> 
> I personally use four virtual desktops associated with 4 wallpapers
> representing each of the 4 seasons; so I can open kontact in spring, dolphin
> in summer etc...For me it is a simple and elegant mnemonic way to use many
> windows on multiple virtual desktops.
> 
> The removal of this possibility seems to me to be a regression that will
> complicate my life and this for the first time since I left w ****** for
> linux.
> 
> I think it would be better to delete the dashboard which seems to be of no
> utility. 
> 
> Perhaps the dashboard of Gnome Shell could inspired changes to Plasma5: a
> new dashboard, providing a tab "workspaces" showing a stack of virtual
> desktops and a statement of the open windows on the current desktop and an
> "activity" tab, could improved man-machine interface and user productivity ?
> 
> I hope soon regain the ability to customize my interface a little better,
> because I remain very attached to kde, and I should be sorry that it
> continued to move in the wrong direction as to convert me to the worship of
> Gnome!
> 
> regards
> Olivier

I 'm using this :
"https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=scratch%2Fmart%2Factivitypager.git"   from Marco Martin.

With 4 activities, one virtual desktop and 4 different wallpapers,  it's perform like virtual desktops.
The main difference is that i can't select the number of rows ( lightly too big in the dashboard),  and the desktop effect when switching.
(Sorry for my english i'm french)
regards.

(In reply to eddy.pilon from comment #85)

"The main difference is that i can't select the number of rows ( lightly too
big in the dashboard),  and the desktop effect when switching.
(Sorry for my english i'm french)
regards."

And that's the main reason why this 'workaround' can't ever substitute the free configurable workspaces. 
I wonder why the KDE developers didn't delete the desktop cube too. It seems to be absolutely useless now. Like dozens of users described it before: paging/spinning cube by mousewheel, recognizing the right workspace by the different wallpapers. It's fast, it's exact, it's elegant, and last but not least soooooooooooo awesome. And KDE was the only DE, that offered it. 
For more than 10 years I didn't need to ask me what DE I should install. Now I don't know at least one DE, that could be he right for all machines I use. For the older machines xfce could be a solution, but for the others, which I use as Cinema or Music Machines with SoundVisualization? It's a real desaster, i'm sure, not only for me. 
With exception of the beginning time with OpenSuSE 13.1 I noticed a little problems (f.e. plasma desktop loss) with the feature (diff widgets), but only for a short time. It worked on 7 PCs, on older hardware as good as on newer - the oldest is a medion pc (32bit), the newest a packard bell easynote_lx86-jp-215ge.
Delete the dashboard like Oliver Belleux wrote in comment 82, or the activities, I won't ever use them on a PC. It's not important to have different wallpapers an d widgets alone - the switching between them is the point, that decides the useability. For me this works best with the cube. 
Sorry for my bad english, too. I'm german.

@David Edmundson,  you seem to be the only KDE dev to have responded (sorry if I've missed the others).  Thank you for that, and thank you that this bug has been reopened! Is there anything we can do to help with this getting done?  You mentioned triaging bugs and the like.  I know we're all busy people with full time jobs and responsibilities but if it would help I get the feeling many of us would be willing to pitch in when/where we can.  This is obviously a big pain point to many of us and we really want to see it resolved.  What can we do? and has there been any further discussion amongst your fellow developers on this?  Thanks again!

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #61)
> Code wise:
> Main class in ShellCorona
> plasma/workspace/shell/corona.cpp has a list of containments
> 
> this class takes that list and puts the right one on the right
> screen/activitiy
> 
> Currently there's a multi layered map with screen -> activity -> containemnt
> 
> this needs to become screen -> activity-> VD -> containment
> 
> Containment.cpp needs to track number of virtual desktops changing and
> delete views / create views / create containments as appropriate.
> 
> DesktopView.cpp is to be on all Virtual Desktops. That would need turning
> off, but that's a one liner.
> 
> That's currently super tricky as that class is super fragile; it's all based
> around QScreen which we want, yet we needed to get a signal that was broken
> in QScreen so it's a combo of two different screen managements systems -
> which get updates are out of sync \o/ 
> 
> We've fixed that in Qt , but we're not getting that till Qt 5.6.  Then that
> class can half in size.
> 
> Dashboard would probably need some tweaking.
> 
> 
> Politics Wise:
> One dev says he doesn't want this feature saying "activities cover it" which
> I would agree with if we made an effort on making activities not suck.
> 
> Personally, I want to kill activities and virtual desktops being two
> separate things as right now it's a mess. Taking the best of both.  Not
> everyone is on board, and I don't want to just pull rank.... but dunno
> 
> Also please stop wtih the "me too comments", especially the snarky ones.
> That'll just put anyone off from working on it.

Dear David!

Did I understand correct that the problems with the vds depend on problems in qt5.6? Does that mean that it is also a problem of the developers of qt?  
Although I wrote programms in Assembler on the 6502 as a pupil in the 80s I don't have any experience in C++-Programming, so I can't help fixing this bug myself by now. But I had some lessons in C last year (self-study). Now I think of self-studying C++ to become able to help fixing those or other problems. You suggested it in a further comment. Also I don't only want to cry my lamento in dev's ears. But that will take some time.
One last question: Is there any hope that the qt-devs will solve the problems in qt 5.6? Is there a qt-bug-report I can look at?
Once more, sorry for my bad english...

Best wishes from Hanau/Germany

I've found the Qscreen Class Documentation on http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qscreen.html (qt5.0). Though I didn't do those things until now, I don't know where I can find the Source Code Files (corona.cpp, containment.cpp, DesktopView.cpp). A path like plasma/workspace/shell/corona.cpp doesn#t exist on my OS 42.1 beta. Also I don't know if the Source Code can be found on the installation. Either, where can  I download it? Are the names of the cpp's in KDE 4.3 the same? Because I should be able to take a look at the old Sources too. I know, that I must be weird to thin I can take this, but (think of A. Merkels words: We can take it! ;-))) After reading the Documentation, I think I should try it.

I've found the Sources for Plasma 5.4.2. If you could give me (of course on occasion) some more detailed informations this could be helpful. I'm on holiday next week and will use this time on it.

I like using virtual desktops and it turns out that having a different desktop image on each one is an important visual cue to understand where you are. Looking constantly at the pager to see where you are is really annoying. Please bring back this feature.

Add me to the list of dissatisfied users. I, as others above used the different backgrounds as a clue to which desktop I was on.
I have used Linux, Kubuntu for a couple of years (I also run 4 Windows machines) as my primary development computer. Switching desktops while working on one of the several websites I administer made the workflow smoother.
I am a user...I only learn enough about Kubuntu to do the tasks I need. 
To hear "activities cover that" is a kinda' slap in the face to a user that is not a Linux Guru. So now I have to learn 'activities' too to get the work done the way I did in 14.xx.
I like 15.10, but I am not happy with you dropping a useful feature.

Add me to the list of dissatisfied users. I, as others above used the different backgrounds as a clue to which desktop I was on.
I have used Linux, Kubuntu for a couple of years (I also run 4 Windows machines) as my primary development computer. Switching desktops while working on one of the several websites I administer made the workflow smoother.
I am a user...I only learn enough about Kubuntu to do the tasks I need. 
To hear "activities cover that" is a kinda' slap in the face to a user that is not a Linux Guru. So now I have to learn 'activities' too to get the work done the way I did in 14.xx.
I like 15.10, but I am not happy with you dropping a useful feature.

Im not going to go into the whole details but like so many I found out about this regression AFTER I installed it. Luckily, I knew what to expect and just like when going from KDE3>4 when I decided to wait until 4.3 when KDE was starting to be usable, this time around I again did not install KDE on a work or home machine. You know the expression:10 times bitten....
I have 4more LTS years not to worry about having to change MY way of working to suit someone's vision of the desktop. I also have over 15 family members for whom I installed Linux for whom the virtual desktops are important (and to be honest, was a big selling point). The big selling point of KDE is that it allows me to use the desktop how I WANT, not how someone else thinks I should do it (I hate all defaults like Oxygen and themes but it takes 20secs to find those I like).
The frustration in being told "we know better than you how you should work" especially from KDE which always had a reputation of allowing users to decide is totally understandable. If anyone is surprised at the reaction, then they havent being paying attention to what users want and use. It reflects a clear disconnect between devs and users. Heck, the wallpapers/widget thing is a very important part of the look of KDE (this isnt 'where are the screensavers?). Im not going to say its a signature but its damn close. 

But lets be clear, I am NOT in any way, shape or form surprised at this. Simply because this is the 2nd time now in 7-8yrs that we move to a 'better' framework and while bugs are expected, to be told that the new framework cant do something that was done 10+yrs ago makes you wonder about what 'better' means.
But worse than that, this is THE EXACT SAME REGRESSION as we had in 2008. That makes 2015 even more frustrating

Take a look at the first sentence and date on a similar bug report to this one: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155150
 
-Jan Wolf 2008-01-05 17:04:01 UTC  Version: (using KDE Devel)   Installed from:  Compiled sources
-It would be nice if it was possible to assign different wallpapers to each virtual desktop again, -like it was in KDE 3.

SAME REGRESSION. SAME RESPONSE.
Except in 2008, Aaron told people that " everything to do with reaching REAL user needs. and no, setting a wallpaper per desktop is not a critical user need."

Back then, it wasnt considered a REAL user need.
Now, it is once again.

THIS is where you start to get people being pissed off.
Pissed off that the EXACT same regression happens 8 years later and pissed off that its once again dismissed as irrelevant  (question: do they poll users to decide what users think are critical user needs or do devs do that on their own?)
Having gone through the same thing in 2008, no one thought that the response about major workflow changes not being announced was going to be the same? Isnt that worrying that procedural mistakes like that happen over and over?  (i know, I know... thats not devs, thats bad management and communications)

But a coworker seems to believe that were going to have this going on for another 6 to 10months and then finally it will be solved, just like it was last time.
And Im sure 7 years from now when Plasma6 comes out we will again be faced with lack of communications about changes, then anger, then it will be fixed and the anger will subside.
Because if your methodology and communications are flawed 8years ago as well as today, there is nothing to stop this from happening again 8 years from now.

And more than the bugs-regression redux, its that last thought that has me worried. Being a community is more than sharing source code. Its being able to communicate to users and devs and have them work together instead of putting users in front of a fait accompli and then let things sort themselves on their own.

(In reply to zeke123 from comment #94)

> The frustration in being told "we know better than you how you should work"
> especially from KDE which always had a reputation of allowing users to
> decide is totally understandable. If anyone is surprised at the reaction,
> then they havent being paying attention to what users want and use. It
> reflects a clear disconnect between devs and users. Heck, the
> wallpapers/widget thing is a very important part of the look of KDE (this
> isnt 'where are the screensavers?). Im not going to say its a signature but
> its damn close. 

Why is there such a disconnect between devs and users?  Has there ever been an attempt to ask/poll users what is essential?  I certainly would put this feature there.  It's always the first thing I set up on a new install.  Still hoping this gets addressed sooner rather than later as I really rely on it.

theovobia@gmx.de any word on how it went?  Did you get a chance to work on it?

@kde developers.  Thanks for reopening this regression.  Please let us know what's going on if you get a minute.

(In reply to Danny Tamez from comment #95)
>  theovobia@gmx.de any word on how it went?  Did you get a chance to work on
> it?
> 
> @kde developers.  Thanks for reopening this regression.  Please let us know
> what's going on if you get a minute.

Hi Danny!

I've taken a look at the source code files of plasma 5 and also on the documentation of QScreen Class. But like I wrote in upper comment, I must have been weird to think I could handle this with only basics of C-Coding. And like David wrote in comment#61: "That's currently super tricky as that class is super fragile; it's all based around QScreen which we want, yet we needed to get a signal that was broken in QScreen so it's a combo of two different screen managements systems - which get updates are out of sync \o/ " the grade of difficulty a little bit :-)))) to high for me. I'm sorry for raising wrong hopes. But I would like to add your last words once more:
"@kde developers. Thanks for reopening this regression. Please let us know what's going on if you get a minute."

In another comment on bugs.kde.org I read, fixing this bug would mean to recode the whole plasma desktop. Nevertheless, I hope they will get it work.

(In reply to theovobia from comment #96)

((  fixing this bug would mean to   recode the whole plasma desktop. Nevertheless, I hope they will get it work ))

Perhaps don' t understanding  difference between activities  and  virtual desktops , but adding  a pager (or ...)  and desktop effects to activities ...  might be a " easier " solution .
I wrote upper that  i'm using  4  activities  with  a pager , different widgets and wallpapers  "like vd  in  my beloved  kde4" .
A little " difference"  is  can't get my desktop cube effects ....!
I m not  a programmer , i can just code a dozen of line , but like you  i'm trying to find a solution.
Thanks  for your  trials.

>Perhaps don' t understanding difference between activities and virtual desktops , but adding a pager (or ...) and desktop effects to activities ... might be a " easier " solution .

Certainly has advantages as you don't end up with two features with such a massive overlap in goals. Simpler code and simpler more consistent UI with everyone getting their features back.
 
Anyway the pager like you said has been done by Marco recently;  https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=scratch%2Fmart%2Factivitypager.git 
There's a discussion on plasma-devel if you search the archives for "RFC: activity pager in kdeplasma-addons"

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #98)

> Anyway the pager like you said has been done by Marco recently; 
> https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=scratch%2Fmart%2Factivitypager.git 
> There's a discussion on plasma-devel if you search the archives for "RFC:
> activity pager in kdeplasma-addons"

I'm using this pager !
I ' ve seen the discussion between Marco and   Ivan Čukić  about this pager after my post.
Seem 's that Marco could find a compromise  about this bug.
regards.

Given that this bug gives me emails every day, I thought I would post my (albeit ugly) hack for having multiple wallpapers on different viewports with plasma 5. If you (like me) don't really care about plasma other than the fact that it should manage panels, what you can do is use feh and some kwin rules to draw separate wallpapers on different viewports. It works okay-ish. I can give anyone that is interested details about my setup.

Thank you, Nathanael, for this effort. However I personally am not happy with a 
«ugly hack».

I have another suggestion: keep plasma 4 for at least another 3 years security 
upgraded, but no more developped with new features. And call it «KDE Traditional» 
instead of Plasma. I actually change all plasma pictures with my own fotos 
usualoly as one of the first jobs when a new version appears. For my eyes, the 
plasma pictures are horrible; the ones in P4 too, by the way.




Am 03.11.2015 um 22:26 schrieb Nathanael Schilling via KDE Bugzilla:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #100 from Nathanael Schilling <nathanaelschilling@gmx.net> ---
> Given that this bug gives me emails every day, I thought I would post my
> (albeit ugly) hack for having multiple wallpapers on different viewports with
> plasma 5. If you (like me) don't really care about plasma other than the fact
> that it should manage panels, what you can do is use feh and some kwin rules to
> draw separate wallpapers on different viewports. It works okay-ish. I can give
> anyone that is interested details about my setup.
>

I find that every time I'm forced to use a workaround like this it ends up getting broken wherever there are updates.  For instance when tiling got removed from KDE I used the script that someone was kind enough to contribute but I recall it was never stable for too long.  I don't think this is a good solution long term although I do appreciate and respect the work that went into producing it.  I really don't want to go back to plasma 4 as I would rather have the latest updates.  But it really does bum me out that this great feature is gone.  There's got to be a way to fix this.

Nathanael 
I'm  interested by your hack.
Thank's

(In reply to Danny Tamez from comment #102)
> I find that every time I'm forced to use a workaround like this it ends up
> getting broken wherever there are updates.  For instance when tiling got
> removed from KDE I used the script that someone was kind enough to
> contribute but I recall it was never stable for too long.  I don't think
> this is a good solution long term although I do appreciate and respect the
> work that went into producing it.  I really don't want to go back to plasma
> 4 as I would rather have the latest updates.  But it really does bum me out
> that this great feature is gone.  There's got to be a way to fix this.

I am back to KDE4 and it is more stable than plasma 5 a lot more stable and still have the traditional feature expected from a KDE desktop.

(In reply to humufr from comment #104)

(( I am back to KDE4 and it is more stable than plasma 5 a lot more stable)) .

Im running fedora rawhide plasma 5 ; and compiled  all my qt applications  to qt5  ( kde-baseapps,qastools, avidemux ,calligra  etc..).
No  crash , seem 's to be usable, just  sddm sometimes long for logging.
But i understand you ,different wallpapers  and widgets features missing , is a little annoying.

Perhaps this might be a solution that pleases all?

We are told that we can have different wallpapers and different widgets on each activity.

So, why not some good programmer(s) enhance the cube by adding the setting to choose which desktop and on which activity for each of its positions?  Should be possible, should it not, to just add extra settings on the on the Virtual Desktops panel in the settings?

Then, I -- for example -- could choose position 1 to be VD#1 on Activity 1, position 2 to be VD#1 (or any other I might prefer) on Activity 2, position 3 to be VD#1 on Activity 3, and position 4 to be VD#1 on Activity 4.

Then, if you prefer, you can just go traditional with 4 desktops on 1 activity (would then all be the same, which is what most of the people in this thread do not want, but the Activities fans are okay with), or for those, like me, who want the different wallpapers and widgets, could set the cube as in my example above.

It would then give us the appearance and feel of what we are accustomed to, without changing the current Activities setup.

Is that possible?

(In reply to Fraser_Bell from comment #106)
> Perhaps this might be a solution that pleases all?
> 
> We are told that we can have different wallpapers and different widgets on
> each activity.
> 
> So, why not some good programmer(s) enhance the cube by adding the setting
> to choose which desktop and on which activity for each of its positions? 
> Should be possible, should it not, to just add extra settings on the on the
> Virtual Desktops panel in the settings?
> 
> Then, I -- for example -- could choose position 1 to be VD#1 on Activity 1,
> position 2 to be VD#1 (or any other I might prefer) on Activity 2, position
> 3 to be VD#1 on Activity 3, and position 4 to be VD#1 on Activity 4.
> 
> Then, if you prefer, you can just go traditional with 4 desktops on 1
> activity (would then all be the same, which is what most of the people in
> this thread do not want, but the Activities fans are okay with), or for
> those, like me, who want the different wallpapers and widgets, could set the
> cube as in my example above.
> 
> It would then give us the appearance and feel of what we are accustomed to,
> without changing the current Activities setup.
> 
> Is that possible?

Try to suggest that 

>Which for most user means abandon to the virtual desktop and this is to push the activities. Why not but in this case there are some adjustment to make like having an option to get the activities visible when going in a corner of the screen (only virtual desktop available), having a possibility to see all the activities as a grid, having shortcut available to move from one avtivities to another very fast. In this case that will be more or less the same things than the virtual desktop just a change of name. If this is implemented I am pretty sure that most of the critics will go away. Obviously there are also the dashboard wich is still here for no real reason since there are no posibility to get different widget on it. The solution will be to attach it to an activities and modify the shortcut and the corner to show the “dashboard activity”.

but got that answer from a dev:

> I don’t use activities, I use virtual desktops (normally 4), I never put different widgets or different wallpapers on different virtual desktops.

So not sure that this solution will be take into account. They doesn't seems to be very listening to the users. In a sens I understand them, they try to provide the best desktop they can but some functionality are missing and user are making a fuss because of that. The devs are feeling that all the work they put are not reconised and start to be on a defense mode and everything go to hell. They did an amazing job but, and it is normal in a big project like that, there are things missing.

I did not read the arguments above, but to me this is a terrible regression. Some say it is one of the best KDE features avaiable, but the feature goes back to CDE (on Unix)  in the 1990s where every desktop has his own colour as a background to see the difference. At that time it was seen as very important. And that still is the case. (Having an image instaed of just a colour might be seen as progression).

It is crucial to see where you are nd whaa you are doing for already 10s of years.

Awesome that this has been reopened.  Thanks for that.  I for one don't want  to see multiple desktops and activities merged.  I think multiple desktops is a concept that is simple and intuitive.  Please don't take that simplicity away by making us jump through a bunch of activities hoops.

I have tried to use activities but are very,  very dissatisfied ... it is like groping around in a dark labyrinth !!! I have used KDE for over 10 years, precisely because it offers customization's in easy and seamless ways. Virtual Desktop customization as many others have said is a productivity issue. But larger than that, it is one of the few features that truly distinguishes KDE from other desktops. Now I see KDE on the way out. Probably I move back to 4.x

Then we fix activities to be as simple as virtual desktop and job done? 

The logic of "I really care about which xprop is used internally or the name the exat same functionality is given" literally makes no sense.

Created attachment 95517 [details]
attachment-10295-0.html

Someone who has swapped to KDE 4, can you post a tutorial for us noobs?
What is the downside? Does it get overwritten every time an update happens?

GranPaSmurf from Galaxy Mega 6.3 Smartphone
On Nov 15, 2015 6:32 AM, "David Edmundson via KDE Bugzilla" <
bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #110 from David Edmundson <kde@davidedmundson.co.uk> ---
> Then we fix activities to be as simple as virtual desktop and job done?
>
> The logic of "I really care about which xprop is used internally or the
> name
> the exat same functionality is given" literally makes no sense.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.
>

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #110)
> Then we fix activities to be as simple as virtual desktop and job done? 
> 
> The logic of "I really care about which xprop is used internally or the name
> the exat same functionality is given" literally makes no sense.

Would it really be the exact same functionality?   Is it somehow easier to get to this functionality using activities rather than just putting it back into virtual desktops?

*** Bug 349486 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

@David

You forgot one thing - patching Plasma is not enough. You would need to patch kwin as well and a couple of its effects that are able to show multiple desktops at the same time (cube and friends, present)...

I'd like to see this feature back as well. I don't actively use activities but I routinely use virtual desktops and want to have a different wallpaper on every desktop (like I can have on Xfce for example).

Since I didn't see this during a quick search of the page or skimming through it and plasma 5 in Debian isn't stable enough to keep plasmashell going, so I haven't used activities there yet:

With plasma 4 there was a problem where borderless windows (chromium, steam, windows forced to be borderless in some KDE settings) were always visible across all activities, which made it impossible to use them as VD replacements. Does this work properly in plasma 5?

I have been on KDE 4 so far, and I am waiting until this HUGE regression is fixed..
However, it has been 1 year since it was reported, and not only is it not being worked on, but no one has even stated that they plan to work on it in the future..

I think I am going to bite this huge bullet and just upgrade (or is it downgrade?) to KDE 5 since I don't see this regression being fixed any time in the fore-seeable future.. We might be lucky to see the feature again in KDE 6.. It is sad that even KDE 3 had this feature, but yet we can't have it now..

Any way, I want to ask you all: When/If I move to KDE 5, is it already possible right now to use activities in some way to semi-emulate desktops with seperate wallpapers?.. And if so, what current draw-backs does that method have compared to having a genuine seperate-wallpaper feature?..

> And if so, what current draw-backs does that method have compared to having a genuine seperate-wallpaper feature?

Forgot the Dashboard, forgot the access through screen edge configuration and desktop grid...

@devs  Is there really any chance of this getting fixed?  The status of the bug is reopened but it seems that the preference is to just let it be.  Is that accurate?  Is it more a matter of time and resources or is this some kind of political thing that's holding it up?  

If an end user took the time to get familiar with the codebase and this issue in particular, code up a fix and submit a pull request would it even be considered?  Is that the only way this is going to get fixed?  A real response would be greatly greatly appreciated!

>@devs Is there really any chance of this getting fixed? 
Yes,

>The status of the bug is reopened but it seems that the preference is to just let it be. Is that accurate? 
No. Though this is not as high as a lot of other things on bugzilla right now. Crash > slightly disrupted workflow.

>Is it more a matter of time and resources or is this some kind of political thing that's holding it up? 
A bit of both. See comment at end, but time is a huge factor too.

>If an end user took the time to get familiar with the codebase and this issue in particular, code up a fix and submit a pull request would it even be considered? 

See #61 where I describe what needs doing. 
If it was done in a way that didn't turn shellcorona.cpp into a complete mess, I'd maybe merge it. Though I think you're looking at a refactor that'd take me 2 weeks of evenings.

>Is that the only way this is going to get fixed? A real response would be greatly greatly appreciated!

Note that 5.5 brings an activity pager, which is one step closer to solving the real issue of:

 1) we have duplicate functionality in both activities and virtual desktops
 2) we "dropped" containment virtual desktop support in favour of activities (where dropped == didn't rewrite support for) 
 3) activities and VDs are not interchangable in workflow patterns.

I'd rather continue that pattern of fixing point 3 rather than go back to the shoddy 4.x state of a half thought through half-duplicating features system, which readding this would be

Thanks so much for the really helpful response :D

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #120)
> See #61 where I describe what needs doing. 
> If it was done in a way that didn't turn shellcorona.cpp into a complete
> mess, I'd maybe merge it. Though I think you're looking at a refactor that'd
> take me 2 weeks of evenings.

note that in order to do it properly an abi incompatible change would be needed in plasma-framework as well, as the resolution of what containment is on what screen is in upstream Corona itself.

So yeah, solving #3 is definitely preferable

Hallo,
I'm not sure, that a missing feature is part of different virtual desktops / different wallpapers. The point I miss, is that my session is not recovered, when I close it, e.g. I opened two konsole sessions, and after relogin (next day) those konsole windows are NOT appearing. Also the KSYSGUARD, which I have been opened and always remembered in my KDE 4.14 (another laptop) is no more remembered from my last session in Plasma 5.
However, without different wallpapers I could live, but when every widget is on every virtual screen, that is confusing, and on a small screen (15 inches or less), all widgets then use much space.
Btw, some words of encouragement: You developers do a great job, and it seems, that Plasma-Shell does no more 'suck' so much memory in Plasma 5 then it did in KDE (4.14.4). I will watch it.
But to be honest, I still use my working laptop with KDE 4.14.4 and no more upgrades (Sabayon repo) and my 'testing' laptop with Plasma, until I will be content.
Thank you for your interest...

+1 for separate wallpaper / pager / desktop simplicity, and for the same reasons elaborated by others.  I'd simply vote for the bug but it appears that voting is not enabled.

At least in my own mind, I don't have workflows and "activities".  I do 95% of my work in a variety of konsole windows, in a nearly static layout, and the other 5% is in a browser.  I use the VD, pager, and wallpaper to keep them organized, and myself located and oriented.  I will wait... (or perhaps experiment with other DE's, but I don't especially want to have to build from from scratch with a building-blocks WM, either.)

Can someone please enable voting for this bug?

They are deliberately disabled for plasmashell as they provide no value.

Bugs should be rated on severity not who can drum up a fuss on social media.

>They are deliberately disabled for plasmashell as they provide no value.

The fact that 126 people have commented on this (and the contents of said comments) so far strongly suggests that wallpapers on multiple desktops provide value for quite a lot of people. 

Then again, understanding that value can be subjective seems to be something that the plasma devs fail to understand so far with this issue....

Devs are scared that if voting was enabled, this bug would shoot to the top, and then they would have to actually do like....real work and stuff.. ＞＿＞

It's my free time, I don't *have* to do anything. 
It's probably in your interest not to piss me off.

It's true that the devs have no obligation to do anything. Given the fact that no progress has been made on this issue for over a year, it seems beyond hope that anything will actually change though. So not pissing off the devs is simply a matter of politeness, I wouldn't expect anything to change by doing so.

Also: You may be taking the comments on a bug too seriously if you're going to change how you deal with a bug with 70 CC-ed users just because a comment pisses you off.

Some progress has happened. The activity pager was merged in 5.5
Also I have a kwin branch.

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #131)
> Some progress has happened. The activity pager was merged in 5.5
> Also I have a kwin branch.

Thanks for working on this!

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #126)
> They are deliberately disabled for plasmashell as they provide no value.

That is obviously false, though I'll grant that the feature provides no value for you.  If it provides no value, why would so many folks be complaining that they miss it?
> 
> Bugs should be rated on severity not who can drum up a fuss on social media.  

I don't think that bug reports really count as social media like Facebook.

In any event, the rationale for disabling separate wallpapers was that it was very difficult to implement them well in the context of Ubuntu 15, not that they were worthless.

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #126)
> They are deliberately disabled for plasmashell as they provide no value.
> 
> Bugs should be rated on severity not who can drum up a fuss on social media.
------
I totally disagree with your approach to customers' needs / requests .....
Those who are successful  know very well who their REAL customer is as well as their real needs and their real options. When you nix them you nix your future .....

BTW..... could you point us to any of user requests to discontinue the different wallpapers  because they have no value to them ? 

Please find below how, some of them approached customers' needed ........ 
------
The best customer service is if the customer doesn't need to call you, doesn't need to talk to you. It just works.
Jeff Bezos

The golden rule for every business man is this: 'Put yourself in your customer's place.'
Orison Swett Marden

Our DNA is as a consumer company - for that individual customer who's voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That's who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it's not up to par, it's our fault, plain and simply.
Steve Jobs

It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your customers' shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken customer relationship.
Mark Cuban

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Sam Walton

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
Peter Drucker

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.
Henry Ford

plasma is an open source project. Whilst I think that the decision to
discontinue multiple wallpapers is stupid, I think it's a stretch to
compare plasma to an actual company that produces things people pay for.

Congratulations guys. You pissed off the only kde dev who was working on that problem... I think that now we can forget having this feature back anytime soon...

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #129)
> It's probably in your interest not to piss me off.

I don't need this feature so I'm not emotionally involved on his disappearing. I profoundly respect and admire your work but the fact is that is you that pissed of the users by removing a feature they loved without even asking them ;)

It's like giving a candy to a kid and, a little later, take it back !
You will only make it cry :D

As I've said before, I really miss the "different wallpapers" feature -- enough so that I'll stick with v14.04LTS until its end of life until and unless the feature is restored.  At the same time, I appreciate all the hard work that David has put into KDE.  I may disagree with his judgement, but ultimately he and the other devs are the bosses here.  I never forget that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

yes, different wallpapers are cool, but what about the marble globe background or the search and launch layout? The were cooler!
ok, not really essential, but cool.

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #129)
> It's probably in your interest not to piss me off.

Plasma is nice, but useless comparing to the final KDE 4.14.11 with it's main, outragous features. So, my question to the devs is: Why did you begin to create a Plasma, if the intention is not to build a better environment than KDE 4 was?
I mean, if you feel pissed off by the users, who really know to value KDE 4, if you won't intent to give them at least the same in Plasma (you might announce in the long run).
I really, really admire your work (for KDE 4), but if in the end Plasma will not offer the specs, which made KDE 4 outragous, then my suggestion: Stop going on working on it. Let it be, if you will only disappoint the real users of KDE. I feel very sad to say this, but I am honest, I am in the customers place here. And for me, I see no reason to change from a reliable, rather good featured, older model (KDE 4) to a still experimental and even less useful new model (Plasma).

>Note that 5.5 brings an activity pager, which is one step closer to solving the real issue of:

... but, it is *not* the cube. ;-)

>I totally disagree with your approach to customers' needs / requests ..... Those who are successful know very well who their REAL customer is as well as their real needs and their real options. When you nix them you nix your future .....

Uh, we are not "customers", we are "users".

This is not a Commercial Enterprise, it is a Community of Programmers (Devs) who volunteer their time and efforts to create something *they* want.  If we want to use it -- become users -- they let us.  They do not try to *sell* it to us or push it on us.

We get what they give us, unless we want to develop our *own* desktop.

Since there seem to be so many here who want the different Wallpapers and -- especially -- the different Widgets, and since most seem to want it back in Virtual Desktops the same way it was in KDE4, why not do the same as was done with OpenOffice?

When they could not agree, when politics got in the way of development, they split out into LibreOffice.

KDE4 could be forked to an alternative desktop.

(In reply to Fraser_Bell from comment #143)
> 
> KDE4 could be forked to an alternative desktop.

In effect, it has been forked to an alternative desktop -- 14.04LTS.  At least it's good until 2019.  I'm sticking with that unless "separate wallpapers" reappears in Plasma  -- which they might by 2019.

I wonder if any other issue has aroused such passions in the KDE community as this one.

I have my free software projects myself, and I understand that you occasionally want to rewrite something from scratch.  Usually, when the main features have been bolted on later, and make the whole thing a maintenance nightmare.  So you think about the feature set and how to solve that clean and lean.  In the discussion about multiple backgrounds in KDE4, I suggested to have two frameless unraisable windows underneath the other windows: root (for the background) and activity on top of root.  These windows would be screen-sized, and either you have n of them for n virtual desktops, or one, and it's attached to all virtual desktops.  Answer was "well, it doesn't fit into the current framework, but we can think about it next time".

Obviously, the people who did the next redesign ignored the last discussion about multiple backgrounds for multiple windows completely.  I mean, this is not really something cunningly new, fvwm has FvwmBacker, which also supports per virtual-desktop backgrounds.  I don't know since when, but I'm pretty sure it's 20 years or more.  This is not a rocket science thing.

As a longtime Plasma user I heavily suggest moving up the ladder and using Plasma 5. If you find bugs report them; if you find missing features let the developers know.
....
Swapnil Bhartiya
http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/865760-opensuse-leap-421-review-the-most-mature-linux-distribution/
---

Compare that recommendation [ "if you find missing features let the developers know." ] with how the KDE dev-team 
handles the reported  KDE-4 forgoten features ....... 



openSUSE Leap 42.1 Review: The Most Mature Linux Distribution 
==============================================================
by Swapnil Bhartiya
....
During the installation process you can choose either Gnome, KDE or others and it will install that particular desktop environment (DE). KDE’s Plasma 5 is the default DE of openSUSE. Once installed you will see both KDE ‘4’ and Plasma 5 in the login screen and you can choose whichever one you prefer.

As a longtime Plasma user I heavily suggest moving up the ladder and using Plasma 5. If you find bugs report them; if you find missing features let the developers know.
....
In any case whether you want a mature and stable OS or a rolling release OS, openSUSE has you covered.

Go ahead take a leap of faith.

http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/865760-opensuse-leap-421-review-the-most-mature-linux-distribution/




Commentaries  to the above article
===================================

Svnset : 23 Nov 15
Guys what u don't get is, that the problems come with KDE plasma. Cannot recommend it even so i liked KDE 4 alot. Moved to leap xfce and no issues at all, works perfect, smooth and sooo fast. It looks just awesome once u're done customizing. Opensuse fully supports xfce lile KDE and GNOME :) In my opinion the author is right it was a big leap! 


wbm :   12 Nov 15
After a machine died I installed Leap 42.1 on a couple of machines with opensuse 13.1, including a vm. Installation is smooth - HOWEVER, the kde plasma (both 4 and 5) crashed multiple times requiring reboot - definitely not enterprise stable. Fortunately, LXDE works very well, and allows me to actually get work done. Moreover, it allows different wallpapers on different desktops, which KDE removed. I have been years with KDE and it just gets worst. I would not recommend KDE to anybody who needs to use the computer for work rather that submitting kde bug reports. I also has some sound issues which pulse audio after fiddling solved. I would recommend leap 42.1 with LXDE.
    Ali :  10 Dec 15
    Good comment. I confirm that KDE 5 crashes multiple time 

Shrivathsa Acharya :  13 Nov 15
A very nice distribution. But KDE is pathetic.. They have suggested change of OpenGL or removal of Baloo indexing tool. Still no improvement. SuSE team need to really work hard to correct this... 
joncr : 14 Nov 15
It's a nice piece of work, but the current refusal to provide live images is a self-inflicted wound. Why can't OpenSuse do what pretty much everyone else does? Why should anyone trust OpenSuse enough to risk their current system by doing a physical install simply to evaluate the product? Expecting people to use Suse Studio to build their own live image is simply clueless, something one would expect from a product manager who thinks all his customers are engineers. Or wishes they were.

developers could be clear and answer this question and not give more bluntly: are you going to continue to ignore this request or going to re-add we ask?

Components virtual desktops with different graphics for each desktop.

Yes or NO

Thank you

PS: I do not speak English translators use to read and write in the forum, sorry if I do not fully understand

Justification: Have both working Virtual desktop (in the sense they worked in 4.X)  and Activities.

There is wonderful synergy between virtual desktops and activities

Scenario: A Manger manages several projects. each project has several sub jobs that may be different  in details. In 4.X we could assign an activity to Job/project then use virtual desktops to sub divide the various functions need to do the work. Each VD would need different widgets to address that part of the job each VB needs a different back ground to allow easy recognition of at which section of the job is fore front. At this time only KDE 4.X can do this no other desktop including Plasma 5  can now do this. 

The synergy of virtual desktops + activities make the above possible. I know that the developers have a hard on for activities over virtual desktops but we really need both. Downgrading virtual desktops breaks the synergy and reduces the functionality we had in 4.X .

If activities are the cats meow   how can one use them in the above scenario without a KDE 4. style virtual desktop???

Here is a summary of my comment in bug 343246 (duplicate one with the crazy status "RESOLVED WONTFIX") :

This missing feature is a really bad regression. I did enjoy KDE4 for that superb feature that KDE3 didn't have. No other desktop environment did have it except KDE4. In KDE4 I was using different virtual desktops that looked different (wallpapers, widgets, folder view on the VD1, desktop view on VD2, widgets and apps links on VD3, and then notebook view in VD4).
I did not find any need to use Activities feature which is a confusing feature and I don't understand what it does best/more than Virtual Desktops !
To me, in KDE 5 you should have dropped Activities feature and keep Virtual Desktops. OR, if you really want Activities to replace it, you should make it as easy to use, with cube transition effects-like, and less buggy than Virtual Desktops (these used to work perfectly in KDE 4).

Commercial companies copied KDE4 :
- Apple OS X manages it within its Spaces feature : independent virtual desktops with different wallpapers, dock icons and apps links icons).
- Microsoft Windows 10 has a similar feature but not as good as KDE4 and Spaces.
- For God's sake why did KDE 5 shell design drop it ? At least the ability to set different wallpapers for each virtual desktop should exist. Under KDE4 I never had any bug related to virtual desktops with different widgets/icons/wallpapers... It was gorgeous ! Hopefully you guys will change your mind and fix it.

Conclusion : every desktop update/upgrade should never drop TOP FEATURES that users LOVE !

Seem 's  kde-dev David is working on this bug  but is lacking  time because of more critical bugs,
Perhaps it would be better to be a little more patient , or  ask how to help.

>Seem 's kde-dev David is working on this bug

If I'm not mistaken, he's working on making activities more compatible
with kwin (he mentions an "activity pager"). Which is nice, but I wonder
whether or not this will actually work with compositing or not. Cynical
me suspects that we will not get actual compositing with this but that
the end result will be manipulations of still images rather than actual
compositing (i.e. if there is a desktop cube with activities and you are
watching a video, you won't see the video move while you rotate). I
remember plenty of programs like that from the compiz era, and all of
them sucked. If the devs go as far as to reinvent virtual desktops
(which I hope), then maybe the stuff that the kde-dev is working on will
solve this bug though.

> wonder whether or not this will actually work with compositing or not.

Kde-dev Marco Martin posted  that  desktops effects can be implemented in activity pager,not easy but possible. So staying optimist for compositing.

Just back from a very wet and rainy Scotland Highland (mostly indoors) week. We 
all had laptops and I convinced three friends to change to KDE (Kubuntu 4.04). 1 
Windows, 1 Fedora and one Ubuntu users.
The deciding USP's I used were the various Desktop backgrounds (all three), 
KMyMoney (1), digiKam (1). The big runner was definitively the different backgrounds.
I told them all about the present situation of incertainity and to have to use the 
14.04 LTS and explained in depth the use of the PPA system. 3 more were sort of 
interested, but a bit disappointed that with Plasma 5 it will no longer be 
available; I think they will not change. The last 3 did were happy with what they 
had. Altogether we had 4 Linux, four Windows and 2 Apples (unsurprisingly for me 
none of them wants to change).

...for what my opinion can count I don't know nothing about what technology lead activity or multiple desktop, but, I love multiple desktop with different background as they behave like in KDE 4 and I use it productively, so, as in Italy says "franza o spagna basta che se magna" activity or multiple desktop, the important is that I can have different background and all the other features as today in KDE4.
..hope that the devs think that these features are more important than others  :-)  :-)

First to the developers; thanks. You have devised an OS like to use on my primary, most stressed, computer. Thanks. Again, Thanks.
Now to everyone else: Back off a little. A free OS that just works. It doesn't take  the almost daily tweaking that goes with my Windows machines. State your case, without the threats and slurs.
MORE: Does anyone remember if Ver. 4 allowed Screen Savers? It seems so to me, but I'm not going to back up just to research it.
This morning I had the bright idea to set up one of my 'activities' (I have 4 and 2 Virtual desktops for each) to have a screensaver. I was thinking, "look at the pretty picture, then just wriggle the mouse and check my email."
So, my qx: Is screensavers another feature that was deprecated in Ver.5? (Though this is probably not the place to ask that question)

This is not a place for discussions, use the development mailing list instead.
Thank you

Maybe or maybe not. But with over 150 comments this bug report has mutated as such.

And just to the idea of some developers to act in their own playbox, what with the thousands of users like me who often support KDE with a financial contribution? Would we not count as «Clients»? Despite my frustration of Plasma 5 I have continued with my contributions in 2015, but I do reserve to change my opinion if I will be continuedly apostrophed as a «Take-what-We-give-you, be thankful for that and keep quiet». 

(In reply to Germano Massullo from comment #156)
> This is not a place for discussions, use the development mailing list
> instead.
> Thank you

Maybe or maybe not. But with over 150 comments this bug report has mutated as such.

And just to the idea of some developers to act in their own playbox, what with the thousands of users like me who often support KDE with a financial contribution? Would we not count as «Clients»? Despite my frustration of Plasma 5 I have continued with my contributions in 2015, but I do reserve to change my opinion if I will be continuedly apostrophed as a «Take-what-We-give-you, be thankful for that and keep quiet». 

(In reply to Germano Massullo from comment #156)
> This is not a place for discussions, use the development mailing list
> instead.
> Thank you

Yes please bring the feature of different wallpaper back, we really like it.

Yes please bring the feature of different wallpaper back, we really like it.

I think further "discussion" here is all rather moot.

Check this bug's history and you'll see that around Comment 135 David Edmundson was indeed truly "pissed off" and removed himself from the cc list... 

I wonder why? (Rhetorical question...)

(In reply to Donald Krebs from comment #155)
> So, my qx: Is screensavers another feature that was deprecated in Ver.5?

Offtopic, but short answer: alas yes. If you want to use a screensaver you have to use xscreensavers. You might want to search for the corresponding bug report ("resolved" WONTFIX IMHO).

I read this before going to bed last night.   I dreamed I was in the not too distant future and I upgraded my desktop.  When the upgrade concluded I rebooted my laptop.  To my amazement all functionality and features had been completely removed except for and in favor of activities.  I was really confused but found that it was not a big deal as the 4 remaining KDE users were absolutely in love with the new streamlined interface.  
I woke up in a cold sweat. Alas, it was but a dream.  But wow, it felt so real!

Perhaps a work-around ?
I've assigned  to each activitie the same number of virtual desktop in kactivitymanagerd-pluginrc.
Now  i've  desktop number, cube effect  with different  wallpapers and widgets with the activitypager like vds.
Look 's weird.

*** Bug 358294 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I also care for this feature and I am disappointed it has been removed. But the reason I'm chiming in is that reading this bug report, I think it makes a good case for a feature bounty feature, it would allow users to add to the bounty instead of posting droves of unhelpful comment and would give incentives to developers to fix some issues according to popular demand.

Though the drawback is that it would also give incentives to abuse the system, say by removing features people rely on so they'd pay to have them back, even worse this could become a cycle.

Also reading this report, it is painfully obvious that there is a discrepancy between what dev do and what user want. Had there been a communication channel to ask user beforehand it would have been clear that this is a feature people actually use and rely on and that it ought not be remove.
Why after all these years KDE doesn't offer a channel of communication between users and devs directly inside KDE is beyond me. You know along dolphin and other kde programs a kdepoll to poll users or a kdefeedback to provide public feedback or something along these lines.

Anyways, hopefully this issue will eventually be fixed and will not make a comeback in a few years with kde 6.

Update:

I met with Martin G (kwin maintainer) and Marco to come up with a solid plan moving forward.

 - We make ShellClient virtual desktops contain an ID not merely a stack index.

 - ShellClient VD cardinality is changed to match activities. 

 - DesktopGrid Effect gets rewritten in QtQuick (we need a change in there for the cardinality changes, and Martin G has had a rule since 2014 that it needs a rewrite before any edits..) 

 - I invert the DesktopView mapping logic in ShellCorona from Activity -> Physical Screen  to Physical Screen -> Activity.  (possibly refactoring into ScreenCorona class: Rule of Dave - if you have nested maps, you're missing a class.)

 - KWin activity code gets dropped completely.

 - 1 DesktopView is created per VD. 

Bam everyone wins, and we get this feature without any config migrations needed. 
Will take some time, so please continue to be patient.

Note: This is a bug tracker for devs, not a public forum. 
I do not want to be flooded with off topic comments. It makes my job harder, as I need to find my notes.  Do so and I will close this bug.

You should make Walk Through Desktops do this http://az648995.vo.msecnd.net/win/2015/04/Clip3.gif or something similar that makes dragging between desktops easier.

Wow!

Thank you so much, David.  Some of us (most?) do appreciate your willingness to remain involved in this.

If you have any idea how I might be able to help with this, contact me.

-Gerry

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #167)
> Update:
> 
> I met with Martin G (kwin maintainer) and Marco to come up with a solid plan
> moving forward.
> 
>  - We make ShellClient virtual desktops contain an ID not merely a stack
> index.
> 
>  - ShellClient VD cardinality is changed to match activities. 
> 
>  - DesktopGrid Effect gets rewritten in QtQuick (we need a change in there
> for the cardinality changes, and Martin G has had a rule since 2014 that it
> needs a rewrite before any edits..) 
> 
>  - I invert the DesktopView mapping logic in ShellCorona from Activity ->
> Physical Screen  to Physical Screen -> Activity.  (possibly refactoring into
> ScreenCorona class: Rule of Dave - if you have nested maps, you're missing a
> class.)
> 
>  - KWin activity code gets dropped completely.
> 
>  - 1 DesktopView is created per VD. 
> 
> Bam everyone wins, and we get this feature without any config migrations
> needed. 
> Will take some time, so please continue to be patient.
> 
> Note: This is a bug tracker for devs, not a public forum. 
> I do not want to be flooded with off topic comments. It makes my job harder,
> as I need to find my notes.  Do so and I will close this bug.

> Will take some time, so please continue to be patient.

Thank you very much David and the others Kde devs.

Thank you. I am not sure to understand everything from the technical part :) but for what I understand that is great!

Bump. Please bring back this feature, as this is why I migrated to KDE4 about 4 years ago.

Thank you for your decision on bringing back this feature.
Is this ticket assigned to any version? :) Sorry for spamming.

Many thanks to David and  KDE-DEV group for their willigness of solving our request . With KDE will continue  being very good but also different in its class .

Request to change the title of this report to include the widgets. Both go together, different wallpapers and different widgets on the virtual desktops. And maybe someone can set Bug 343246 to RESOLVED DUPLICATE of this one instead of a WONTFIX? Please?

And many thanks for investigating and contemplating the issue.

I just went through a forced distribution upgrade and am now using KDE 5.5.4.
I would very much like a prognosis on when.  A "fuzzy notion" so I'd know if this
were imminent or maybe something that would languish for a decade.
In other words, it would take a lot of effort to switch to another window manager,
but I'd do that if this were to take terribly long.  Just a fuzzy notion so I can set
my expectations.  Thank you!!

Just to remind of the outragous features of KDE 4.x, where selective virtual desktops and also monitors can be configured: https://www.linux.com/learn/how-use-kde-plasma-desktop-pro . Here a quote of:
...
"A multi-monitor bliss
Plasma is bliss for those with multiple monitor setups. Plasma gives each monitor a personality of its own - which is quite limited on other DEs. You can give each monitor a different wallpaper (you can actually set different wallpapers for virtual desktops and activities as well.) Each monitor can have its own desktop layout and panels. The widgets on these panels and desktops can be configured differently which means, if you work with clients who are in different time zones, you can change the time of each desktop to that particular time-zone.
******No other DE, in my knowledge, is capable of doing that.******

Panels and widgets
Two core components of the Plasma desktop experience are panels and widgets which enhance the user experience.
....
To access the extra features of the panel, click on the cashew icon on the right hand side of each panel and then configure it. I don't really know why they use 'cashew', a gear icon may be more appropriate so a user gets a hint of what it does.

If you want to add more panels, just right-click on the empty desktop and choose 'add panel' from the context menu.

KDE’s widgets take the customization of the desktop to the next level. These widgets allow you to access information quickly on the desktop, as well as on the panel. These widgets, embedded on panel are not mere icons to open that app - they work like the widgets you have seen on Android.

Widgets can also be added to the desktop - the way you do with Android. Depending on the distro, a Plasma desktop comes with a set of widgets, but you can always install more widgets which are being developed by the community. I installed a couple of widgets such as Play Control (which allows me to control the music player), RSS reader, Weather, etc. Go ahead, explore and you will find something new.
..."

So, to emphasise, what were the very special of KDE 4.1x, and what is the lack of Plasma 5(.6), these Plasma featues really matter. (-> see ****)

@linuxfluesterer

Please read the bug report before starting a new flameware. A solution is now discussing to solve that.

Yes there are feature in kde4 which was promoted a lot and not continued in kde5, paradigm change, developer change, some things which seems cool at the time proved to be not so cool, mistakes happen...

If you are reading my comments you'll see that I am for that feature to come back for the following reasons:

- having different wallpaper on different virtual desktop
- having different widget/plasmoid on different virtual desktop
- to not copying Gnome behavior (which is ... not useful  in my point of view)
- being able to leave kde4 and going to kde5 (I am trying on VM kde5 but my main desktop is still kde4)

and I am probably missing some  reasons. 

Thanksfully KDE developers are willing to find the good solution in term of codes and users. Thanks again to them.

Are there any news on this one? Just to make sure it hasn't been thrown at the bottom of the trash...

I'm sorry, I don't see a schedule... anyone have an idea when this might be fixed?

First Comment 2014. Now it's July 2016. I don't think there will anything happen in this case. So I stay with the really fantastic KDE4 as long as possible and when there are no more updates I switch to some other Desktop Environment. 
And the main reason is not so much, that the developers are not able to implement this technology but their attitude against the people who wanted it back. So for me: RIP KDE. I used you from 1997 to 2016. But no it seems to be over. So sad. Good bye.

Hi aschne. The small desktop Xfce can do that. I too have given up any hope to be able to use the once worlds best Desktop again, as I would have liked. Try it with Manjaro Xfce, this is light Distrubution, or to continue with the Goodies from *buntu, install Xubuntu. You can also install Xfce over your 14.04, I think. however, I did not dare to try it on my working program. If you speak German, join us with www.kubuntusers.de

Created attachment 99805 [details]
attachment-564-0.html

Well this totally sucks
On Jan 11, 2016 2:49 PM, "eddy.pilon via KDE Bugzilla" <
bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #164 from eddy.pilon <eddy.pilon@orange.fr> ---
> Perhaps a work-around ?
> I've assigned  to each activitie the same number of virtual desktop in
> kactivitymanagerd-pluginrc.
> Now  i've  desktop number, cube effect  with different  wallpapers and
> widgets
> with the activitypager like vds.
> Look 's weird.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.
>

(In reply to Danny Tamez from comment #183)
> Created attachment 99805 [details]
> attachment-564-0.html
> 
> Well this totally sucks
> On Jan 11, 2016 2:49 PM, "eddy.pilon via KDE Bugzilla" <
> bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:
> 
> > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
> >
> > --- Comment #164 from eddy.pilon <eddy.pilon@orange.fr> ---
> > Perhaps a work-around ?
> > I've assigned  to each activitie the same number of virtual desktop in
> > kactivitymanagerd-pluginrc.
> > Now  i've  desktop number, cube effect  with different  wallpapers and
> > widgets
> > with the activitypager like vds.
> > Look 's weird.
> >
> > --
> > You are receiving this mail because:
> > You are on the CC list for the bug.
> >

Hmmm.. and what do you want to tell us? I can not follow your intention.
-Linuxfluesterer

Sorry Linuxfluesterer,  What I meant was, we've waited patiently for a long time on the promise that this would be fixed,  and it seems that it's not going to happen.  That's what totally sucks.  Which seems so strange when so many users really want this back.  I guess waiting patiently didn't work :(

Tried my luck with Opensuse Leap 42.1 .
After install it looks a very , very bad REGRESSION ..... It seems that the "new" plasma5  KDE is worse that windose 1.0 .
You get messages like .... "the kwin failed" and gives you two options "Restart appl" and/or "close" to  windose of 1998 !
AS for the much promoted plasma5,  the panel disappears,  the palsma stops  and give you the "black" screen.  That's an improvement over windose ! 

Over all the "leap-plasma5" combination is a disaster .
Quo Vadis ..... Leap/KDE developers ?

This Leap/KDE disaster reminds me of  
1. A.Cooper's  1999 book " The Inmates are Running the Asylum [ Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How ro Restore the Sanity ] "  and 
2. T. Winograd's  1996 book " Bringing Design to Software ". 

Sadly,  I recommend  both of them to the team[s] who p*ssed off  the KDE Community , and  
retired  the good OpenSuse 13.2 and KDE 4 replacing them with very badly designed "better products" .  They just replaced a Cathedral  and forced us into a bazaar !
What a pity !
Good riddance Leap  and and good riddance KDE5 with your plasma !


I

(In reply to Danny Tamez from comment #183)
> Created attachment 99805 [details]
> attachment-564-0.html
> 
> Well this totally sucks
> On Jan 11, 2016 2:49 PM, "eddy.pilon via KDE Bugzilla" <
> bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:
> 
> > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
> >
> > --- Comment #164 from eddy.pilon <eddy.pilon@orange.fr> ---
> > Perhaps a work-around ?
> > I've assigned  to each activitie the same number of virtual desktop in
> > kactivitymanagerd-pluginrc.
> > Now  i've  desktop number, cube effect  with different  wallpapers and
> > widgets
> > with the activitypager like vds.
> > Look 's weird.
> >
> > --
> > You are receiving this mail because:
> > You are on the CC list for the bug.
> >

Sorry, my english is light and don't really understand what you want to say by " Well this totally sucks" !!
I just wanted to say that since my distro switch to plasma5  i've had enough to wait and tried my wallpapers and cube effect  to come back with config files.
But i understand you . 
My distro just switched to plasma 5.7,  same issue and no commits about this bug.

After a two-year try to convince the developers, I have to state this is no longer 
a Bug.
Instead it has become battle between an group of developers who wants to develop 
what they want and hundred of millions of users.

KDE post plasma 4.x is now definitively not on my fare and I suppose even with a 
plasma 6 I shall never return. Xubuntu (Xfce desktop) can do it, so I am switching 
to them, well knowing, that I loose some dear routines.  other Distros have a 
Xfce-Desktop version too. So, why get heated about something we can not influence 
due to sort of «Chinese Stubbornness» of the producers side. If Mercedes would 
suddenly only build three-wheel-cars, they would very soon realise, the regular 
customer find valuable alternatives (Audi, Jaguar, Chryslers, etc) and get 
financially bankrupt. In this case the result will be, that less and less users 
will use KDE.

That's my last post in this depressing discussion.

Bye to all, you disregarded Users and arrogant Developers. Stay happy and use Linux.

Just on afterthought: this situation resembles the European Union. If a majority 
of the EU-PARLIAMENT (min. 376 MEPs) make by vote a decision, this result has no 
binding value to the 28 Commissars nor to the 28 head of States. They can decide 
whatever they want. Democracy at its best???





Am 03.07.2016 um 08:13 schrieb eddy.pilon via KDE Bugzilla:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #187 from eddy.pilon <eddy.pilon@orange.fr> ---
> (In reply to Danny Tamez from comment #183)
>> Created attachment 99805 [details]
>> attachment-564-0.html
>>
>> Well this totally sucks
>> On Jan 11, 2016 2:49 PM, "eddy.pilon via KDE Bugzilla" <
>> bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:
>>
>>> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>>>
>>> --- Comment #164 from eddy.pilon <eddy.pilon@orange.fr> ---
>>> Perhaps a work-around ?
>>> I've assigned  to each activitie the same number of virtual desktop in
>>> kactivitymanagerd-pluginrc.
>>> Now  i've  desktop number, cube effect  with different  wallpapers and
>>> widgets
>>> with the activitypager like vds.
>>> Look 's weird.
>>>
>>> --
>>> You are receiving this mail because:
>>> You are on the CC list for the bug.
>>>
>
> Sorry, my english is light and don't really understand what you want to say by
> " Well this totally sucks" !!
> I just wanted to say that since my distro switch to plasma5  i've had enough to
> wait and tried my wallpapers and cube effect  to come back with config files.
> But i understand you .
> My distro just switched to plasma 5.7,  same issue and no commits about this
> bug.
>

Ok guys, please stop useless bashing of the devs. While I also am impatient to see the features back, I realize it is not a trivial matter but actually a quite complex architectural change. David said they are working on it so please be patient.

As a side note however it is becoming more difficult updating different systems as kde 4 has been deprecated on many and new packages are requiring 5. David, when you have a rough estimate of time schedule please let us know.

Thank you

(In reply to loop.rw from comment #189)
> Ok guys, please stop useless bashing of the devs. While I also am impatient
> to see the features back, I realize it is not a trivial matter but actually
> a quite complex architectural change. David said they are working on it so
> please be patient.
> 
> As a side note however it is becoming more difficult updating different
> systems ...

Hmm, ok, the fundament of Plasma 5 may be more difficult than the one of KDE...
But only if the fundament is well, the building can should be started. I will not offend any dev here, but maybe Plasma could be compared with our German airport BER, an absolute desaster and in the end nobody is really content.
I agree to Arran (com ment 188), who said:
>Just on afterthought: this situation resembles the European Union. If a majority 
>of the EU-PARLIAMENT (min. 376 MEPs) make by vote a decision, this result has no 
>binding value to the 28 Commissars nor to the 28 head of States. They can decide 
>whatever they want. Democracy at its best???
I am rather sure, Plasma devs could have prevented this trouble situation.
As I said before, I am still using KDE version 4.14.10. Anyway, lost time for every Plasma users, who have a serious demand for lost features (and, much more important, broken functions!).

-Linuxfluesterer

Thanks for the flowers (Danke für die Blumen), linuxflüsterer. What really brought 
my temper to overflow, the doctor racing home and sedating me for four days, was 
the moment I was told, that the Xfce desktop has done that feature in a couple of 
weaks, after read the first comments here. I don't have much time until September, 
but then, unless...» I swith to Xubuntu.


Am 05.07.2016 um 12:59 schrieb linuxfluesterer via KDE Bugzilla:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #190 from linuxfluesterer <linuxfluesterer@gmx.net> ---
> (In reply to loop.rw from comment #189)
>> Ok guys, please stop useless bashing of the devs. While I also am impatient
>> to see the features back, I realize it is not a trivial matter but actually
>> a quite complex architectural change. David said they are working on it so
>> please be patient.
>>
>> As a side note however it is becoming more difficult updating different
>> systems ...
>
> Hmm, ok, the fundament of Plasma 5 may be more difficult than the one of KDE...
> But only if the fundament is well, the building can should be started. I will
> not offend any dev here, but maybe Plasma could be compared with our German
> airport BER, an absolute desaster and in the end nobody is really content.
> I agree to Arran (com ment 188), who said:
>> Just on afterthought: this situation resembles the European Union. If a majority
>> of the EU-PARLIAMENT (min. 376 MEPs) make by vote a decision, this result has no
>> binding value to the 28 Commissars nor to the 28 head of States. They can decide
>> whatever they want. Democracy at its best???
> I am rather sure, Plasma devs could have prevented this trouble situation.
> As I said before, I am still using KDE version 4.14.10. Anyway, lost time for
> every Plasma users, who have a serious demand for lost features (and, much more
> important, broken functions!).
>
> -Linuxfluesterer
>

We will not see the return of this functionality un 5.8 either: https://phabricator.kde.org/tag/plasma/

Still on a mix of kde4 and kde5 but I am starting to have more and more problem. Dolphin is basically unasable now (konqueror still working fine thanksfully).

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #167)
> Update:
> 
> I met with Martin G (kwin maintainer) and Marco to come up with a solid plan
> moving forward.
> 
>  - We make ShellClient virtual desktops contain an ID not merely a stack
> index.
> 
>  - ShellClient VD cardinality is changed to match activities. 
> 
>  - DesktopGrid Effect gets rewritten in QtQuick (we need a change in there
> for the cardinality changes, and Martin G has had a rule since 2014 that it
> needs a rewrite before any edits..) 
> 
>  - I invert the DesktopView mapping logic in ShellCorona from Activity ->
> Physical Screen  to Physical Screen -> Activity.  (possibly refactoring into
> ScreenCorona class: Rule of Dave - if you have nested maps, you're missing a
> class.)
> 
>  - KWin activity code gets dropped completely.
> 
>  - 1 DesktopView is created per VD. 
> 
> Bam everyone wins, and we get this feature without any config migrations
> needed. 
> Will take some time, so please continue to be patient.
> 
> Note: This is a bug tracker for devs, not a public forum. 
> I do not want to be flooded with off topic comments. It makes my job harder,
> as I need to find my notes.  Do so and I will close this bug.

At the risk of polluting the thread, I just want to add a gratuitous (!) thank you, not just for your willingness to do the hard work to resurrect the feature, but for your work on the project in general.

I've used KDE for several years because it is feature-rich, perhaps to a fault.  It draws criticism from many corners by people who prefer "lightweight."  But it's my personal preference.  KDE does not force me to adapt to a predetermined work style.  It adapts to me.  I can appreciate that the functionality that was removed is effectively available via Activities and arguably in a more logical presentation, but the metaphor is different.  As someone who has used Activities and Desktops simultaneously for years, I have developed a particular work style and set of habits such that the removal was jarring.  It was antithetical to what I have always regarded KDE to represent.

Sure, I can adapt, but that misses the point, and frankly, the imperious rejoinder to objections that "it's not needed" smacks of arrogance and invites the observation that KDE is not needed.  As the developer, one is entitled to their arrogance, and as a person one is entitled to their irritation.  But it surprised me.  Sorry, but that's how I see it.

Please affirm that the functionality will be restored and that users have not been abandoned due to pique.  I can wait, and I don't look a gift horse in the mouth.  But tell us we have a reason to wait, OK?  A very few words will suffice.  Just as a courtesy.

I add to this painful debate with huge caution.

I use 3 screens, 6 virtual desktops (obviously of 3 screens each) 
On three of the virtual desktops I have a dual screen virtual machine, 
and each of the 3 dual screen VMs has 4 virtual desktops. 

I keep track of where I am by wallpaper.
I move between the virtual desktops with mouse scroll.  
I move stuff between the virtual desktops, also with mouse scroll.  
Mostly I am moving data between the desktops so data from one can be input to or compared with another.

Sounds complex but the VMs simply contain the risks
and the multiple virtual desktops metaphor allows me to move things around easily to visualize and see patterns.

I agree with @Janet #21  and @Nathanael #22 on usability.
I really tried activities multiple times, I wanted to love them. 
But, and it may be a reflection of my poor upbringing,  just hate them.

I may have a longer memory than most, (except @loop.rw #38 and @zeke123 #94 who raised the same point)
or may just be older,
but we had the same issue in going from the beautiful, magic kde3 to the initially non-functional kde4:
devs also then attempted to force users to use activities and did not have different wallpapers / desktop
So I did not upgrade from Kubuntu 8.04 until 12.04, when kde4 finally reached feature parity with kde3.

I bought another machine last week, and installed kubuntu 14.04 on it, not 16.04, *only* because of this.
So now I am on kubuntu 14.04, and obviously will be staying with it quite a while longer
Hopefully not past 14.04's end of life, but I will if I have to.  
How I work is too important too me to mess with, and I can manage the security.

Plus the beauty of kde4, like the beauty of kde3 before it, is really hard to part with.

finally, @David Edmundson, you are a hero - not just for getting stuff done
but for the feedback to users.

Hope this has been a positive contribution.

(In reply to mc from comment #194)
>...
> So now I am on kubuntu 14.04, and obviously will be staying with it quite a
> while longer
> Hopefully not past 14.04's end of life, but I will if I have to.  
> How I work is too important too me to mess with, and I can manage the
> security.
> 
> Plus the beauty of kde4, like the beauty of kde3 before it, is really hard
> to part with.
> 
> finally, @David Edmundson, you are a hero - not just for getting stuff done
> but for the feedback to users.
> 
> Hope this has been a positive contribution.

Yes, KDE4 is absolutely fantastic.

I just moved from Ubuntu 16.04 to 14.04 because of similar reasons.  There are many issues with KDE 5 that I was just trippng over.  I could not simply right-click and use icon settings to change application parameters conveniently.  I cannot use window tabs to drag and regroup windows.  The omissions were just killing my workflow.  I have started a kvm server running 16.04 in the new machine in order to make use of ZFS in the Linux kernel as supplied by the distro.

Support for legacy features are critical in the commercial software world.  Promoters of FOSS often claim that it is superior in part because of increased flexibility, options and community support.  Yet I was practically ridiculed and taunted for suggesting I would move back to KDE4 over on Freenode #plasma.  Ironically, I was informed that it is no longer "supported."  Some community!

Thank you for the information on XFCE. After being a KDE user since KDE2 I am giving up. This bug is open for a long time and nothing seems to happen on the subject. If I want to use Gnome, I will have go to it. Now probably because of the mixed of kde4 and kde5/plasma5 I am experiencing weird appareance with dolphin which is totally different than all the other KDE applications. This problem will probably disappear with a full kde5 desktop but unfortunately I am totally unable to adapt to the new paradigms. Since I have to adapt to something different so be it, but I will do it for a desktop that will be more or less adapted to my workflow.  

Thanks for KDE, it was a pleasure to use for years but it is time to move somewhere else now. Good luck.

(In reply to Arran from comment #188)
> After a two-year try to convince the developers, I have to state this is no
> longer 
> a Bug.
> Instead it has become battle between an group of developers who wants to
> develop 
> what they want and hundred of millions of users.
> 
> KDE post plasma 4.x is now definitively not on my fare and I suppose even
> with a 
> plasma 6 I shall never return. Xubuntu (Xfce desktop) can do it, so I am
> switching 
> to them, well knowing, that I loose some dear routines.  other Distros have
> a 
> Xfce-Desktop version too. So, why get heated about something we can not
> influence 
> due to sort of «Chinese Stubbornness» of the producers side. If Mercedes
> would 
> suddenly only build three-wheel-cars, they would very soon realise, the
> regular 
> customer find valuable alternatives (Audi, Jaguar, Chryslers, etc) and get 
> financially bankrupt. In this case the result will be, that less and less
> users 
> will use KDE.
> 
> That's my last post in this depressing discussion.
> 
> Bye to all, you disregarded Users and arrogant Developers. Stay happy and
> use Linux.
> 
> Just on afterthought: this situation resembles the European Union. If a
> majority 
> of the EU-PARLIAMENT (min. 376 MEPs) make by vote a decision, this result
> has no 
> binding value to the 28 Commissars nor to the 28 head of States. They can
> decide 
> whatever they want. Democracy at its best???
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Am 03.07.2016 um 08:13 schrieb eddy.pilon via KDE Bugzilla:
> > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
> >
> > --- Comment #187 from eddy.pilon <eddy.pilon@orange.fr> ---
> > (In reply to Danny Tamez from comment #183)
> >> Created attachment 99805 [details]
> >> attachment-564-0.html
> >>
> >> Well this totally sucks
> >> On Jan 11, 2016 2:49 PM, "eddy.pilon via KDE Bugzilla" <
> >> bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
> >>>
> >>> --- Comment #164 from eddy.pilon <eddy.pilon@orange.fr> ---
> >>> Perhaps a work-around ?
> >>> I've assigned  to each activitie the same number of virtual desktop in
> >>> kactivitymanagerd-pluginrc.
> >>> Now  i've  desktop number, cube effect  with different  wallpapers and
> >>> widgets
> >>> with the activitypager like vds.
> >>> Look 's weird.
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> You are receiving this mail because:
> >>> You are on the CC list for the bug.
> >>>
> >
> > Sorry, my english is light and don't really understand what you want to say by
> > " Well this totally sucks" !!
> > I just wanted to say that since my distro switch to plasma5  i've had enough to
> > wait and tried my wallpapers and cube effect  to come back with config files.
> > But i understand you .
> > My distro just switched to plasma 5.7,  same issue and no commits about this
> > bug.
> >

Any news for this function? KDE devs? If you don't like this function, say that to your users, and close all relevant ticket, as wontfix. But this? Maybe, and working this problem, and bla-bla. ~2 years!

It is the time to say yes or no!

Any news for this function? KDE devs? If you don't like this function, say that to your users, and close all relevant ticket, as wontfix. But this? Maybe, and working this problem, and bla-bla. ~2 years!

It is the time to say yes or no!

Any news for this function? KDE devs? If you don't like this function, say that to your users, and close all relevant ticket, as wontfix. But this? Maybe, and working this problem, and bla-bla. ~2 years!

It is the time to say yes or no!

Strongly agree it is time to say YES or NO.

answer is a simple answer. Yes or NO

@kikadf and @Diego
to be honest - developers have already said "No" in December 2014! - but this "No" was not accepted.
And yes, I would like to have it back too; but you can't say, there was no decision

(In reply to Wulf from comment #201)
> @kikadf and @Diego
> to be honest - developers have already said "No" in December 2014! - but
> this "No" was not accepted.
> And yes, I would like to have it back too; but you can't say, there was no
> decision

Nope, David realised this is useful and he got onto it. It is taking time but I believe the guy:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143#c167

Still guys, stop spamming. If you are interested in the bug, get in CC and wait. If you got time get into code and help the devs rather than spamming.

So to give some update (to show I'm not ignoring this)

From me in #61
>That's currently super tricky as that class is super fragile; it's all based around QScreen which we want, yet we needed to get a signal that was broken in QScreen so it's a combo of two different screen managements systems - which get updates are out of sync \o/ We've fixed that in Qt , but we're not getting that till Qt 5.6. Then that class can half in size.

If you've done the maths, you'll realise that got done in Plasma 5.7 (~6 weeks ago). However it exposed some other startup bug, and now some extra complex layer of multiscreen stuff got added on top - so it's moved forwards, but still not in quite an ideal state.

Though I will re-itterate, please don't type opinions in a bug tracker. They just make it harder for me to find useful comments.

Still an issue in Plasma 5.7.5 and upwards. 

Activities don't provide an alternative ; for example if I want to refer back to content on another desktop, - I can't alt-tab to it if it's in a different activity. The delineation between activities makes that pretty much impossible unless I switch back to the previous activity with one command, and then source the content with another, - from my own experience it's markedly slower than just using a virtual desktop and visually identifying it with a different wallpaper and widget set.

(In reply to Canoe from comment #204)
Hi guy
From comment  204  David dev seems  mostly made the job . Wait ... , may be in two months our christmas present ...

Otherwise , i dimly remember  Aaron Seigo commit  about the same kde4 issue on his blog:
After implemented this future , tells  user  how to configure plasmaappletrc for testing and report bugs before  validation.
Hope that kde dev will make such.

Sorry for my english.

> I can't alt-tab to it if it's in a different activity

Sure you can.

System settings -> Window Management -> Task Switcher

There's a checkbox for activities just like there is for the VDs.

Why not just enable different wallpaper on each virtual desktop like KDE3? Choose the virtual desktop, set the wallpaper for that desktop. 

I have no use for activities, and could care less about widgets. To me that nonsense has been nothing but a 9 year waste of time that should be an optional package, but I do like a different wallpaper on each desktop. There is no reason anyone should have to set 10 different activity and widget settings just to have a different wallpaper on each virtual desktop work and have the task manager and desktop switcher still continue to function correctly.

As of Frameworks 5.28.0 and Qt 5.7.0, there is still no simple way to put a different wallpaper on each virtual desktop in system settings.

(In reply to David Rankin from comment #207)
David said it perfectly.

Except that they cannot be 'just enabled'. The code for that is simply not there, and it is not trivial to add it. Prove me wrong, if you want.

I don't care any longer if this negative aspect to KDE's clients, the users, continues. I have found PClinuxOS with Trinity as desktop environment. It bases on KDE used before the first Plasma, but steadily developed to keep up to their users demands. I am now, after a short trial of 2 weeks, prepared to install it as my new bread and butter distribution and I do not have to bother with KDE any more. What a releave.

How many users will lose KDE for not implementing this characteristic that we have been asking for a re-incorporation for years.

"Thanks" KDE for ignoring your users.

a greeting.

I couldn't do without the wallpaper switching any longer, and so implemented a quick solution.  It doesn't address the ability to have different widgets on each virtual desktop, as was possible before, but at least allows separate wallpaper.  It does so by tricking the slideshow background into changing its image.

Anyone is welcome to try it out - code is at
https://github.com/martenjj/wallpaperswitch

Please don't comment on this bug report or bother the Plasma developers about this - it is unofficial and nothing to do with the Plasma project.

(In reply to Jonathan Marten from comment #212)
 
> Please don't comment on this bug report or bother the Plasma developers
> about this - it is unofficial and nothing to do with the Plasma project.

Sorry, but I just can't help posting a THANK YOU for this Jonathan. 
Very cool.  I've been waiting for over 2 years. 
Thank You.

There is a work-around that does not require any installation, just configuration.
Tested on Debian Stretch with KDE 5.8 (which will be used for a while, so the w/a may be useful). 

At the end, you will have a pager with N "screen", Ctrl-FN will switch to "screen" N, and the mouse wheel will also move between "screens". Except that technically each "screen" will be an activity of 1 virtual desktop (VD).

Let's start:
 
1) switch the pager from a VD to an activity pager:
  - unlock the taskbar
  - right click on the pager
  - select the "Alternatives..." menu entry
  - click "Activity Pager" and then the "Switch" button
  => now the pager tracks activities
  While there, right click on the pager again, select "Activity Pager Settings..." and configure to taste.

2) Move to a single VD, so each activity = 1 VD = 1 screen
  - System Settings => Desktop Behavior => Virtual Desktops, reduce to 1.
  
3) Create as many activities as you need "screens" (same number as the qty of
   VDs you used to use);
  - System Settings => Desktop Behavior => Activities, create and name as needed.
  Now you see the activities in your pager, and from the pager point of view
  it's as before except activities replaced VDs.   
  
4) Enable the mouse wheel to switch between activities
  - Right click on the desktop background => Configure Desktop
  - Select the "Mouse Actions" tab
  - Item "Vertical-Scroll", select "Switch Activity"
  IMPORTANT: this setting is per activity. So you need to repeat this for all
  the created activities.
  
5) Enable Ctrl-Fn to switch directly to screen (= activity) n

  The first thing I tried (and it didn't work for me) is in System Settings => Shortcuts => Global Shortcuts. In the "Components" list, select the "Plasma" entry. Here you can see the created activities, but there are two problems:
    - instead of their nice, user chosen name, it's a UUID based name
    - assigning a keyboard shortcut "Ctrl-Fn" is possible, but does not work for me
  => Could someone confirm this on latest KDE? So I know if I need to file a
     bug on KDE or on Debian. Thanks.
     
  The alternate method, which works, uses "Custom Shortcuts" under the shortcut system settings too and is a bit more complicated. For each screen/activity:
   - click on "Edit" and select New => Global Shortcut => D-Bus Command
   - Name the new keyboard shortcut, for example "Go to screen N"
   - In "Trigger", set the shortcut. For example Ctrl-F1 for the 1st screen
   - In the Action tab:
     * For "Remote application", use "org.kde.ActivityManager"
     * For "Remote object": "/ActivityManager/Activities"
     * For "Function": "org.kde.ActivityManager.Activities.SetCurrentActivity"
     * For "Arguments": the UUID of the activity (see below).
     (no quote in any field)

     And to get an activity UUID:
     * click on "Launch D-Bus Browser"
     * in the "search" field, enter "activity"
     * select "org.kde.ActivityManager"
     * in the methods tab, select ActivityManager => Activities
       then: org.kde.ActivityManager.Activities
     * click on the "Method: ListActivitiesWithInformation" entry
     Now in the bottom field, you have the method output listing all the created activities with their nice user name and their UUID. Select the UUID (only, not the "Argument: (ssssi) part nor the quotes) and use it the shortcut "Arguments" field as is. 
     * Apply.

     Now Ctrl-Fn will switch to the activity/screen n. There is a slide animation that doesn't seem to be configurable. If anyone knows how to disable it, I'd appreciate the info (but I can live with it).
     
Done! And of course, because each "screen" is now an activity, you can configure different backgrounds and widgets. As I don't use other fancy VD tools (cube, etc.) for my limited use it's functionally equivalent to the VD features I used to use under KDE4. For others, you may loose some features. If anyone knows how to improve on this, feel free to share.

(In reply to an.inbox from comment #214)
> There is a work-around that does not require any installation, just
> configuration.
> Tested on Debian Stretch with KDE 5.8 (which will be used for a while, so
> the w/a may be useful). 
> 
> At the end, you will have a pager with N "screen", Ctrl-FN will switch to
> "screen" N, and the mouse wheel will also move between "screens". Except
> that technically each "screen" will be an activity of 1 virtual desktop (VD).
> 
> Let's start:
>  
> 1) switch the pager from a VD to an activity pager:
>   - unlock the taskbar
>   - right click on the pager
>   - select the "Alternatives..." menu entry
>   - click "Activity Pager" and then the "Switch" button
>   => now the pager tracks activities
>   While there, right click on the pager again, select "Activity Pager
> Settings..." and configure to taste.
> 
> 2) Move to a single VD, so each activity = 1 VD = 1 screen
>   - System Settings => Desktop Behavior => Virtual Desktops, reduce to 1.
>   
> 3) Create as many activities as you need "screens" (same number as the qty of
>    VDs you used to use);
>   - System Settings => Desktop Behavior => Activities, create and name as
> needed.
>   Now you see the activities in your pager, and from the pager point of view
>   it's as before except activities replaced VDs.   
>   
> 4) Enable the mouse wheel to switch between activities
>   - Right click on the desktop background => Configure Desktop
>   - Select the "Mouse Actions" tab
>   - Item "Vertical-Scroll", select "Switch Activity"
>   IMPORTANT: this setting is per activity. So you need to repeat this for all
>   the created activities.
>   
> 5) Enable Ctrl-Fn to switch directly to screen (= activity) n
> 
>   The first thing I tried (and it didn't work for me) is in System Settings
> => Shortcuts => Global Shortcuts. In the "Components" list, select the
> "Plasma" entry. Here you can see the created activities, but there are two
> problems:
>     - instead of their nice, user chosen name, it's a UUID based name
>     - assigning a keyboard shortcut "Ctrl-Fn" is possible, but does not work
> for me
>   => Could someone confirm this on latest KDE? So I know if I need to file a
>      bug on KDE or on Debian. Thanks.
>      
>   The alternate method, which works, uses "Custom Shortcuts" under the
> shortcut system settings too and is a bit more complicated. For each
> screen/activity:
>    - click on "Edit" and select New => Global Shortcut => D-Bus Command
>    - Name the new keyboard shortcut, for example "Go to screen N"
>    - In "Trigger", set the shortcut. For example Ctrl-F1 for the 1st screen
>    - In the Action tab:
>      * For "Remote application", use "org.kde.ActivityManager"
>      * For "Remote object": "/ActivityManager/Activities"
>      * For "Function":
> "org.kde.ActivityManager.Activities.SetCurrentActivity"
>      * For "Arguments": the UUID of the activity (see below).
>      (no quote in any field)
> 
>      And to get an activity UUID:
>      * click on "Launch D-Bus Browser"
>      * in the "search" field, enter "activity"
>      * select "org.kde.ActivityManager"
>      * in the methods tab, select ActivityManager => Activities
>        then: org.kde.ActivityManager.Activities
>      * click on the "Method: ListActivitiesWithInformation" entry
>      Now in the bottom field, you have the method output listing all the
> created activities with their nice user name and their UUID. Select the UUID
> (only, not the "Argument: (ssssi) part nor the quotes) and use it the
> shortcut "Arguments" field as is. 
>      * Apply.
> 
>      Now Ctrl-Fn will switch to the activity/screen n. There is a slide
> animation that doesn't seem to be configurable. If anyone knows how to
> disable it, I'd appreciate the info (but I can live with it).
>      
> Done! And of course, because each "screen" is now an activity, you can
> configure different backgrounds and widgets. As I don't use other fancy VD
> tools (cube, etc.) for my limited use it's functionally equivalent to the VD
> features I used to use under KDE4. For others, you may loose some features.
> If anyone knows how to improve on this, feel free to share.

Hi from comman(In reply to an.inbox from comment #214)
> There is a work-around that does not require any installation, just
> configuration.
> Tested on Debian Stretch with KDE 5.8 (which will be used for a while, so
> the w/a may be useful). 
> 
> At the end, you will have a pager with N "screen", Ctrl-FN will switch to
> "screen" N, and the mouse wheel will also move between "screens". Except
> that technically each "screen" will be an activity of 1 virtual desktop (VD).
> 
> Let's start:
>  
> 1) switch the pager from a VD to an activity pager:
>   - unlock the taskbar
>   - right click on the pager
>   - select the "Alternatives..." menu entry
>   - click "Activity Pager" and then the "Switch" button
>   => now the pager tracks activities
>   While there, right click on the pager again, select "Activity Pager
> Settings..." and configure to taste.
> 
> 2) Move to a single VD, so each activity = 1 VD = 1 screen
>   - System Settings => Desktop Behavior => Virtual Desktops, reduce to 1.
>   
> 3) Create as many activities as you need "screens" (same number as the qty of
>    VDs you used to use);
>   - System Settings => Desktop Behavior => Activities, create and name as
> needed.
>   Now you see the activities in your pager, and from the pager point of view
>   it's as before except activities replaced VDs.   
>   
> 4) Enable the mouse wheel to switch between activities
>   - Right click on the desktop background => Configure Desktop
>   - Select the "Mouse Actions" tab
>   - Item "Vertical-Scroll", select "Switch Activity"
>   IMPORTANT: this setting is per activity. So you need to repeat this for all
>   the created activities.
>   
> 5) Enable Ctrl-Fn to switch directly to screen (= activity) n
> 
>   The first thing I tried (and it didn't work for me) is in System Settings
> => Shortcuts => Global Shortcuts. In the "Components" list, select the
> "Plasma" entry. Here you can see the created activities, but there are two
> problems:
>     - instead of their nice, user chosen name, it's a UUID based name
>     - assigning a keyboard shortcut "Ctrl-Fn" is possible, but does not work
> for me
>   => Could someone confirm this on latest KDE? So I know if I need to file a
>      bug on KDE or on Debian. Thanks.
>      
>   The alternate method, which works, uses "Custom Shortcuts" under the
> shortcut system settings too and is a bit more complicated. For each
> screen/activity:
>    - click on "Edit" and select New => Global Shortcut => D-Bus Command
>    - Name the new keyboard shortcut, for example "Go to screen N"
>    - In "Trigger", set the shortcut. For example Ctrl-F1 for the 1st screen
>    - In the Action tab:
>      * For "Remote application", use "org.kde.ActivityManager"
>      * For "Remote object": "/ActivityManager/Activities"
>      * For "Function":
> "org.kde.ActivityManager.Activities.SetCurrentActivity"
>      * For "Arguments": the UUID of the activity (see below).
>      (no quote in any field)
> 
>      And to get an activity UUID:
>      * click on "Launch D-Bus Browser"
>      * in the "search" field, enter "activity"
>      * select "org.kde.ActivityManager"
>      * in the methods tab, select ActivityManager => Activities
>        then: org.kde.ActivityManager.Activities
>      * click on the "Method: ListActivitiesWithInformation" entry
>      Now in the bottom field, you have the method output listing all the
> created activities with their nice user name and their UUID. Select the UUID
> (only, not the "Argument: (ssssi) part nor the quotes) and use it the
> shortcut "Arguments" field as is. 
>      * Apply.
> 
>      Now Ctrl-Fn will switch to the activity/screen n. There is a slide
> animation that doesn't seem to be configurable. If anyone knows how to
> disable it, I'd appreciate the info (but I can live with it).
>      
> Done! And of course, because each "screen" is now an activity, you can
> configure different backgrounds and widgets. As I don't use other fancy VD
> tools (cube, etc.) for my limited use it's functionally equivalent to the VD
> features I used to use under KDE4. For others, you may loose some features.
> If anyone knows how to improve on this, feel free to share.

Hi !.
from comment 164, got same result a few months ago with cube effect by kactivitymanagerd-pluginrc config, (activity uuid and screen number).
But now i using Jonathan Marten switcher for different wallpapers.
Sorry for my english.

(In reply to an.inbox from comment an.inbox@free.fr #214)
> There is a work-around that does not require any installation, just
> configuration.
...

Thank you for your 'workaround'.
I'm sorry to say, I'm not able to follow this workaround, those steps, because I'm not a native English speaker / user. So the phrases and expressions are not easily able to be translated. You can call it: I'm too stupid, it's ok.
And second, it sounds too complicated for me to distressing to make it possible handling with independent Virtual Desktops. And i'm sure, I'm not the only one. I'm will go on to work with KDE 4.14.10 until realisation of a basic, essential feature in Plasma, which made it rather most worth to use KDE.

Hi Linuxflüsterer
I totally agree with you.
I have realised, that perhaps leaving KDE is (for me) the real future, as I am all for democracy also in OpenSource products. What we experience since more than 10 years from KDE is a blatant dictatorship. I have found out that «xfce» can do all that, what I wanted. Out of the Box. I'm just a bit too busy and have the outlook that by end of the month I have a fast internet connection (about 70+) I then will change to installing a distribution with xfce.
And then, KDE kann mir die Hosen herabrutschen und gestohlen bleiben.

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to add that I would very much love to have the virtual desktops with the customizations and features they already had in Plasma 4 including custom wallpapers and widgets per virtual desktop in Plasma 5.x for all the good reasons that have been detailed in this post's thread. And as others have mentioned, If you can also get Plasma 5's Activities to function the same way with all the features of Plasma 4's virtual desktops, or some easy to use working combination and integration of Virtual Desktops and Activities, that would be great as well.

Thank you to the KDE developers who are working on bringing this to us KDE users.

There are a lot of people including me and other Linux Mint KDE users that want this and are waiting for this before upgrading to KDE Plasma 5. 

What is the progress, please?

Hmm, in Sebastian Kuegler's blog (https://vizzzion.org/blog/2016/10/plasmas-road-ahead/). I read this:
"One new feature which we want to offer in our Wayland session is support for scaling the contents of each output individually, which allows users to use multiple displays with vastly varying pixel densities more seamlessly.
There are also improvements planned around virtual desktops under Wayland, as well as their relation to Plasma’s Activities features. Output configuration as of now is also not complete, and needs more work in the coming months. Some features we plan will also need changes in QtWayland, so there’s some upstream bug-fixing needed, as well."
...
I am not sure about the meaning. Does it mean that in Plasma 5.9 individual Virtual Desktops will be (maybe?) realised by activities?
I really hope, not. Or will individual Desktops with individual wallpapers and plasmoids the KDE 4 way will become true?

*** Bug 374077 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Like the many many others who have commented here, I was devastated and rather indignant that the different widgets, different wallpaper feature had been removed from the Virtual Desktops.  However, thanks entirely to the very useful reply by an.inbox@free.fr (Comment 214, on 2017-01-03), I am now personally very happy, having replicated the functionality I require using Activities instead of Desktops.  The critical thing is to change the Destop Pager to an Activity Pager and to change to just one Desktop per Activity, followed by a bit of customisation of the Activities.  Indeed, as far as I can see, Desktops now, without the differnt widgets/wallpapers facility, are pretty useless and just a misleading distraction.

I was "forced" to upgrade to OpenSUSE 42.2 (with Plasma 5) since OpenSUSE 13.2 is now supported, and as usual after each upgrade, one of the first things I set about doing was changing the Desktops to use different widgets.  I couldn't believe it when I searched and searched and still couldn't find the facility anywhere, and after a lot of Googling I found my way here.  Although I am now perfectly happy with the Activities solution, I think lots of other people will have the same problem and it would be worth doing more to direct people to Activities and tell them how to use them.

(In reply to Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle from comment #221)

> personally very happy, having replicated the functionality I require using
> Activities instead of Desktops.  The critical thing is to change the Destop

Can I make an "Activity Cube" with one Activity on each side, and does switching between activities use the compositor (kwin)? Last time I checked this was not the case. The reason I (and others I know) initially switched to Linux around 10 years ago was the fact that it had compiz and you could do stuff like this. The reason I switched to KDE around 5 years ago was that plasma could paint a transparent background on the Desktop, letting you get a different wallpaper on each Desktop. It seems like every time this feature appears, someone decides "nobody is using this" and soon there is a bug report with 100 CCs with the standard answer being "our desktop paradigm that uses activities is better than yours so just change". Eventually someone writes a hack that doesn't really fix the problem but just changes the wallpaper whenever the desktop is changed, and we're back to what people were doing 10 years ago. The state of multiple wallpapers on the linux-desktop remains pathetic.

As I said before. Xfce does offer exactly this.

(In reply to Arran from comment #223)
> As I said before. Xfce does offer exactly this.

With kwin as the compositor?

@ Nathanael Schilling 
I do not think this Bug report is on Activities. This is about wallpapers  on the virtual desktops. Also, I think you have a question, but not a bug report.

So either report a new bug (with all evidence and material that should go with it), or go to the KDE forums to ask for help/explanation about your subject.

(In reply to hcvv from comment #225)
> @ Nathanael Schilling 
> I do not think this Bug report is on Activities. This is about wallpapers 
> on the virtual desktops.

I am very much aware what this Bug report is about. The (or at least a) reason why this Bug has not been fixed is that plasma devs feel that "activities" should be able to replace virtual desktops. The point I am making (and others also have made) is that activities currently do not have the necessary functionality to replace virtual desktops. My question was in reply to a comment that claimed that xfce had the functionality in question (multiple wallpaperes on virtual desktops, including compositing).

(In reply to Nathanael Schilling from comment #224)
> (In reply to Arran from comment #223)
> > As I said before. Xfce does offer exactly this.
> 
> With kwin as the compositor?

I don't give a penny what is is called. And even less who makes it. The only important thing for me is, that I have again the different Backgrounds on different Desktops without any twistings, tricks and cheats. Whether this is based on Plasma or Moon or Hell does not count for me. I am not married with KDE, not at all. They lured me away from Mint due to exactly the different backgrounds and now they tell me I am daft to not find Activities attractive.

Best, you try it out for yourself on any of the distros with XFC€.

(In reply to Nathanael Schilling from comment #222)
> (In reply to Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle from comment #221)
> 
> 
> Can I make an "Activity Cube" with one Activity on each side, and does
> switching between activities use the compositor (kwin)? Last time I checked
> this was not the case. The reason I (and others I know) initially switched
> to Linux around 10 years ago was the fact that it had compiz and you could
> do stuff like this. The reason I switched to KDE around 5 years ago was that
> plasma could paint a transparent background on the Desktop, letting you get
> a different wallpaper on each Desktop. It seems like every time this feature
> appears, someone decides "nobody is using this" and soon there is a bug
> report with 100 CCs with the standard answer being "our desktop paradigm
> that uses activities is better than yours so just change". Eventually
> someone writes a hack that doesn't really fix the problem but just changes
> the wallpaper whenever the desktop is changed, and we're back to what people
> were doing 10 years ago. The state of multiple wallpapers on the
> linux-desktop remains pathetic.

This.  I don't really care how it's done, and yes, it's a fairly non-utilitarian pretty, but this is one of the things that drew me to Linux as a full-time OS.

I tried Cinnamon, and it's a nice desktop, but at the time not quite mature.  I went to KDE 4.x and was happy, but there were problems (still are) with little things like bluetooth implementation that I could never solve.  I went to LM 18 xfce, with a wonderful mass-rename function in thunar, but bluetooth still wouldn't work and to my chagrin I couldn't get PHPMyAdmin to work either!  Sure, the cube is there, kinda, but not the pretty function we had all the way back in the Gnome 2 days.  I mean, the transition between desktops looked cubelike, but we used to be able to see and manipulate a whole cube, see where each desktop sat in relation to the others: pretty, and high-tech!  But that was almost a decade ago.

KDE 5.x solves those problems I had with xfce, but then I lose the one utility that I had gotten so comfortable with: quickly switching between virtual desktops with each desktop having different widgets and different wallpapers... with each wallpaper I know which desktop I'm on and therefore which work I am doing in each.

I am on KDE 5.x now, using the Activities workaround, trying to get everything set up the way I like (haven't got my ctrl-alt-arrow switch working yet), but my pretties are gone, and while this is a modern desktop environment, with bluetooth that works with my equipment, I still feel like things are going backward.

Hallo.
Today I had the luck to test the new KDE Neon with the latest Plasma 5.9 as date of 02/02/2017. Ok, it looks nice, but I haven't been looking for useful new features (sorry). Instead, I found that the big bug of missing individual desktops with individually creatable wallpapers and plasmoids is still not yet solved. To be honest, I really have expected that this topic would be solved with the new main line of Plasma.
May I kindly ask, when will this topic be taken seriously to be solved, not with any activity trick, only such the way it was done in KDE 4 (.10.14)?
In between I fear I have to reinstall KDE 4.x from a Mint 17 version, which is still shipped with the KDE 4 environment.

Hélas, probablement jamais.
Alas, probably never.
Leider, vermutlich nie.

But any Distro run with the Xfce desktop environment does it. Thats now my choice.

Honestly, for me XFCE seems to be a big step back in Desktop Environments. Simple less requirements on hardware, old looking style (like KDE 3).
In KDE 4 I love programs like Kaffeine, Dolphin, KOrganizer, and also because of many possible entries, Klipper.
And when I can use different screens with different wallpapers and different, independent plasmoids like mesurement displaying, photos, clocks, the 'globe' on my ultra wide monitor with six independent virtual desktops, I feel like in heaven. This is rather improving productivity.
XFCE can't offer that, sorry...
I really love KDE, since version 1.1 (shipped by SuSE) and my hopes are still there to receive individual virtual desktops with individual plasmoids in the beautiful Plasma 5.9? soon. 
Pls. developers, don't let us hang again and again. You already know since 2014-11-21 (Plasma 5.2). Thank you.

(In reply to linuxfluesterer from comment #231)
> Honestly, for me XFCE seems to be a big step back in Desktop Environments.
> Simple less requirements on hardware, old looking style (like KDE 3).
> In KDE 4 I love programs like Kaffeine, Dolphin, KOrganizer, and also
> because of many possible entries, Klipper.
> And when I can use different screens with different wallpapers and
> different, independent plasmoids like mesurement displaying, photos, clocks,
> the 'globe' on my ultra wide monitor with six independent virtual desktops,
> I feel like in heaven. This is rather improving productivity.
> XFCE can't offer that, sorry...
> I really love KDE, since version 1.1 (shipped by SuSE) and my hopes are
> still there to receive individual virtual desktops with individual plasmoids
> in the beautiful Plasma 5.9? soon. 
> Pls. developers, don't let us hang again and again. You already know since
> 2014-11-21 (Plasma 5.2). Thank you.

To quote the assigned owner of this bug ; Marco Martin ; 
--
 Marco Martin 2014-12-02 17:55:57 UTC

yes, the feature has been removed and due to the huge problem and added complexity it gave, is not going back.
different workspaces with different containment/wallpaper can be done with activities, and that's what's supported.
--
It's clear he's not going to action this in any way unless David Edmundson pulls  rank, which he's unwilling to do. The developers (Marco et al) think Activities is an acceptable alternative and are stubbornly refusing to budge, and we're left in the middle just trying to get a feature back we all used in KDE4. 

David/Marco, - it would be hugely appreciated, after over two years waiting, to get some kind of final answer on this, either way. David I remember you saying it would be returned after some additional work, here's hoping you can provide some clarity. 

Thanks for your efforts!

Yes, please stop yanking our chain.  If you have no intention of fixing this just say so.  As it is right now we've been waiting over 2 years for one fix.  It's obviously a really big deal to a lot of people and everyone is angry about the way it's being handled.  I still love KDE but man this kind of thing has gotten so old.  Can we please have some honest answers?

I've dealt with this situation by sticking with Kubuntu 14.04, which is a long-term release and should be maintained for a few years more.  Not a permanent solution, unfortunately.

(In reply to abrahams from comment #234)
> I've dealt with this situation by sticking with Kubuntu 14.04, which is a
> long-term release and should be maintained for a few years more.  Not a
> permanent solution, unfortunately.

I'm doing the same while I look for alternatives.  I would live with this problem but based on this thread and experience, I fear there are other regressions that are more serious that will never be fixed.  In particular, during my brief attempt to use 5, I was unable to use tabbed windows which I find to be immensely convenient.  Perhaps I overlooked something there.  It is very discouraging.

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #2)
> >yes, the feature has been removed and due to the huge problem and added complexity it gave, is not going back.
> 
> Then close the bug.

----------
What is a camel ?
A horse designed by a very complex committee .
It seems that the good old KDE has just become a camel with lots of complexities .

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #2)
> >yes, the feature has been removed and due to the huge problem and added complexity it gave, is not going back.
> 
> Then close the bug.

----------
What is a camel ?
A horse designed by a very complex committee .
It seems that the good old KDE has just become a camel with lots of complexities .

I've had some time to work with this on the latest Plasma 5.9.3. 

This is my solution using Activities : 
1. Set virtual desktops to 1, with 1 row. 
2. Create as many Activities as you need Virtual Desktops.
3. Add the Activities Pager widget, this replaces the VD Widget!
4. Go to Task Switcher settings and filter windows by activity.

You now have the equivalent of Virtual Desktops, with their own wallpapers and widgets per desktop. It works, and the only difference I can see is that you're using Meta+Tab instead of alt-tab. 

I'm hoping more clarification is given on this, more so for how powerful Activities are, hopefully some closure will be given during on-going development. 

Thanks again to the Devs for their continued efforts in Plasma, - it's much appreciated.

Analogy time. Please bear with me, I promise that this is directly related to the bug report...

Imagine you start a home business, and you set up a workshop in your garage to make or repair things. In that room you have a workbench, and on that bench you keep your various tools and working projects. Business is good, and you soon find yourself running out of space, so you set up a second bench near the first. And on it you have more tools, some of them being duplicates of those on the first bench, and others unique, so you can work on slightly different things. But you can also use the two benches in tandem when you have a really big project. Later on you add a third bench, and a fourth, and so on, to give you even more workspace.

Now you also need an office to manage your business. That's in another room of your house. And in that room you have a desk with a computer, in/out-trays, pens and pencils, pads of paper, and other office supplies on it. As you become more successful you also put in a couple more tables, bookshelves, and cabinets and whatnot, each with its own collection of supplies, to help improve your productivity there too.

In the rest of the house of course you also have a living area, with a TV, sofa, and various other facilities for relaxing, a kitchen/dining room for preparing food and eating it, a bedroom for sleeping, bathroom, whatever. Each room has its own purpose and its own unique set of accoutrements for fulfilling that purpose. And for the most part you keep each kind activity to its own space. You seldom, but not never, transfer what you're doing from one room to another.

I hope you see where I'm going with this. Activities and Virtual Desktops, while being similar in many ways, are most definitely *not* the same thing. They categorize your work in different conceptual ways. Activities are like the various rooms, each focused *thematically* on a certain functional area. V.D.s are like the tables, benches, counters and other workspaces inside those rooms. They *spatially* organize the work you're doing and provide the actual tools with which to complete the various tasks within each area of activity.

Now to apply this to the actual bug (and the proposed solutions and workarounds), I think most people are overlooking this foundational conceptual flaw that lies behind it -- the lack of recognition of the psychological separation between function space and work space, the differences in how we view them and react to them, and the differences in the work flows we set up within and between them.

Activities and V.D.s perform complementary roles, not identical ones. Trying to replace or duplicate the one with the other is like saying four workshops with one bench each are basically the same thing as one workshop with four benches. They're not. Even if you put them right next to each other, cut doors between the rooms for easy access, and add pushcarts, conveyor belts, or whatever for the easy moving of projects between them, it's just never going to sit quite right in your mind or your behavior. You'd still be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Even worse, it could be seen as trying to put a workbench in your office, or an office desk in your workshop, or a toaster in your bathroom. 

Or say you do succeed in making the two experiences similar enough to not notice the difference. Then what was the point in changing it in the first place?


Anyway, to my mind an ideal KDE set-up would provide the following:

1. The ability to set up one or more Activities, each of which can be centered around its own area of "business".

2. One or more Virtual Desktops inside each Activity, to provide the actual work areas in which to operate within that Activity's scope.

3. Full, individual, customizability of each Desktop inside each Activity, including...

    3a. Setting the look and feel of each one so that it is clearly distinct from the others, the background being one of the most vital elements in creating that psychological, virtual "workspace".
    3b. Individual customizability of the various widgets, toolbars and other features that populate each Desktop.
    3c. The ability to set any single feature or tool as either unique to that Desktop or shared between all of them. Some features need to be always at hand, just as a workman might carry a toolbelt between workbenches with his most-used tools on it, while others can and should be confined to a certain workspace.

4. Multiple ways to quickly and easily navigate and move objects between Desktops, the ability to smoothly switch between Activities, and simple, but not necessarily as immediate, mechanisms for transferring and jumping to programs between Activities. Perhaps on occasion you really do need to put a toaster in the bathroom, but it will never be anywhere nearly as often as moving it from one kitchen counter to another.


And really, the devs really should know this already, because that's pretty much exactly how they tried to market Activities when KDE4 first came out. Different "rooms" for different purposes. They've just overlooked how important it is to be able to customize each room to the purpose it's been assigned to.

Finally, frankly, if anything had to be dropped, I'd dump the Activities in a heartbeat. They've always felt like a solution in search of a problem to me. For the majority of desktop users it's the computer itself that acts as the function space. When people really do need different functional computing spaces they more often than not just set up separate machines for them, or at least separate user log-ins. Notice how the all of the solutions discussed here have centered around trying to re-create the old Virtual Desktop experience using Activities. *Nobody* is talking about using Activities as Activities in and of themselves.

Am Samstag, 4. März 2017, 09:59:16 CET schrieb David H. :
> I hope you see where I'm going with this. Activities and Virtual Desktops,
> while being similar in many ways, are most definitely *not* the same thing.

Actually, I think of virtual desktop as different "rooms" on my screen. This 
is, because a virtual desktop is spatially arranged, you go to the left, 
right, up or down from one desktop to the next. I usually have different 
activities on different desktops (not necessarily in the Plasma sense of 
"activity"), e.g. one desktop has shells and emacs, and is for programming, 
another desktop has Kontact and is for e-mail, the third desktop has Chromium, 
and is for browsing the web, the fourth has Digikam and is for processing 
photos. You get it. It's like the different rooms in your house's example.

If I need more shells in the programming desktop (and yes, I need), I open 
more windows and more tabs per Konsole window. If I need more websites in the 
web-browsing desktop, I open more tabs. That is analogous to your benches: 
They are in the same room, they are visible and available at the same time.

I liked KDE4's way to tie an activity to a virtual desktop, it made sense to 
also have different widgets in different virtual desktops (and especially 
different wallpapers to ease your orientation), and slide from one activity to 
the other just by pushing the mouse to the edge of the screen.

I think the only thing that's now missing to fix this bug is to configure the 
desktop edge and desktop scrollwheel action to slide between different 
activities instead of different virtual desktops. Everything else is already 
in place: We have an activity pager which can replace the virtual desktop 
pager, when we switch between activities, it does slide (though not always in 
the right direction, as the activity pager looks 2D, but the activities are 
actually arranged only in one direction, horizontally).

Your "thematically" vs. "spatially" is about the right way to think, but many 
of us separate thematically different things spatially. Like in your startup 
example: You have the garage for the workbenches (the "dirty" part of your 
startup), you have the working room with the computers, the living room for 
meetings (use the TV for presentations). You might also have a temporal 
relation, so in the evening, you change the way the rooms are used: The 
employees went home, and you can now use the TV in the living room as actual 
TV.

Perhaps this is what the original "activity" designers imagined: Instead of 
quickly walking from one room to the other, you rearrange the room, and use it 
for something else.

For all the good things in Plasma 5, they are worthless owing to the loss of ability to set different wallpaper for each virtual desktop.  That's how I keep track of which desktop I'm working in.  It greatly aided efficiency.

Without this vital feature, I'm better off using XFCE because it boots two seconds faster and has fewer parts that kill the DE when things get messed up.  I've always used XFCE to recover from fatal KDE errors.  Might as well use it for my DE.

Thanks to the KDE team for the many years of wonderful Plasma pre-5.  I look forward to your new programs and features.  There are better DE's than Plasma when there's no wallpaper difference, especially when KDE's other great features are loaded into XFCE.

Created attachment 104419 [details]
attachment-3516-0.html

Well said
On Mar 6, 2017 3:37 PM, "Jay" <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> Jay <atlpcug@excite.com> changed:
>
>            What    |Removed                     |Added
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------
>                  CC|                            |atlpcug@excite.com
>
> --- Comment #241 from Jay <atlpcug@excite.com> ---
> For all the good things in Plasma 5, they are worthless owing to the loss
> of
> ability to set different wallpaper for each virtual desktop.  That's how I
> keep
> track of which desktop I'm working in.  It greatly aided efficiency.
>
> Without this vital feature, I'm better off using XFCE because it boots two
> seconds faster and has fewer parts that kill the DE when things get messed
> up.
> I've always used XFCE to recover from fatal KDE errors.  Might as well use
> it
> for my DE.
>
> Thanks to the KDE team for the many years of wonderful Plasma pre-5.  I
> look
> forward to your new programs and features.  There are better DE's than
> Plasma
> when there's no wallpaper difference, especially when KDE's other great
> features are loaded into XFCE.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.

Missing this feature as well. Please reconsider.

*** Bug 378674 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Instead of posting yet more rambling rants and recipes for trying to make activities work for this (most of which are unnecessarily complex and eliminate other uses of activities) I encourage all to look into Post 212:
It simply works:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143#c212

I'm not sure if this is going to be useful at all, but I actually used activities and desktops combined, so I really lost functionality when all desktops became equal.

I am a Data Analyst, and I usually create a separate activity for each project I'm working on, plus a couple of general ones (communication, entertainment, etc.). For the project-related ones, I usually have one desktop where I code, one where I view graphics, one where I run background process and I used to have different backgrounds and widgets for each of these. They were all related, but definitely different for each desktop. The background was nice, but the different widgets were really important, and those are gone.

I don't have the skills to help fix this problem, but I'd really appreciate to have the functionality available in KDE 14 back. The workarounds suggested don't match my use case.

Forget about that bug. It will be corrected in KDE6 perhaps. For the time being I found the following workaround with the activites. 
I am using activities as virtual desktop and I put an activity pager settings to have a fast view of what happens on each of them. I put that pager on a big autohide panel so it us usable to see the different windows and moving them (I use the new dock Latte for that it is much nicer).

I am still missing the corner which show all the desktop on a grid but at least I was able to redo more or less my KDE4 workflow with plasma. I tried other DE but KDE is still the one I prefer because of the configuration I still can do.

I have different wallpapers for different desktops (and different icons) because it makes the system easier for me to move back and forth. The whole idea behind KDE was not to make choices for users - Windows does that - but to give them options to run the way they want.  You've taken that away without a replacement.

(In reply to lorne schachter from comment #248)
> You've taken that away
> without a replacement.

There is a replacement.  See post 212 above 
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143#c212

Hello, i try to compile/install the application wallpaperswitch. but i can't compile the script. have somebody do it on debian9, known as stretch?
i need help.
thx to everybody who can tell me how to compile/install wallpaperswitch on stretch.

xoric

(In reply to xoric from comment #250)
> Hello, i try to compile/install the application wallpaperswitch. but i can't
> compile the script. have somebody do it on debian9, known as stretch?
> i need help.
> thx to everybody who can tell me how to compile/install wallpaperswitch on
> stretch.
> 
> xoric

Well, I've setup Debian VM to test it. After some errors and googling it compiled.

Here's what you need, in case of error just google bit ending with ".cmake" and add debian to it.

g++
cmake
extra-cmake-modules
qt5base-dev
qtdeclarative5-dev
libkf5crash-dev
libkf5dbusaddons-dev
libkf5notifications-dev
libkf5notifyconfig-dev
gettext

Good luck.

I could have just googled how to compile KDE on Debian beforehand...
https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Build_from_source/Install_the_dependencies

(In reply to Piotr Kloc from comment #251)
> Well, I've setup Debian VM to test it. After some errors and googling it
> compiled.
> 
> Here's what you need, in case of error just google bit ending with ".cmake"
> and add debian to it.
> 
+> g++
+> cmake
+> extra-cmake-modules
-> qt5base-dev
> qtdeclarative5-dev
> libkf5crash-dev
> libkf5dbusaddons-dev
> libkf5notifications-dev
> libkf5notifyconfig-dev
> gettext
> 
> Good luck.
> 
> I could have just googled how to compile KDE on Debian beforehand...
> https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Build_from_source/
> Install_the_dependencies

Thanks, it works. i used "metager", maybe this was the fault. the packages i installed are marked with "+". The package with "-" don't exist (apt-get gives error) I tried many other packages with "qt5quick", because of that i fail. Im not programer and after 4 years as linuxuser, i learned every day from beginning... :-)
for usage:
i have 2 monitors. in kde4 is no problem. wallpaperswitch needs extra large wallpaper to show different picture in every monitor. at the moment this is ok. Big thanks to Jonathan Martin for this part of software. I hope, kde will come in future with the features of kde4.
"Back to the roots" this is why i love to work with linux.
honestly, for proffessional work i would not prefer kde. it is too instable. i would prefer fluxbox: highly configurable, very hard stable (it survives two dist-upgrades with no problems). the eye candy features of kde 4 (different wallpaper to every Workspace and Monitor and 3d-effects) make it attractive to me as average user.

What's the official stance on this bug now that a new plasmoid has been released that serves this purpose?

http://www.kdeblog.com/vallpaper-un-fondo-de-pantalla-diferente-para-escritorio.html

(In reply to Canoe from comment #253)
> What's the official stance on this bug now that a new plasmoid has been
> released that serves this purpose?
> 
> http://www.kdeblog.com/vallpaper-un-fondo-de-pantalla-diferente-para-
> escritorio.html

A commendable work, sadly, it only covers the least important portion of the bug: wallpapers.

This problem actually impacts productivity due to the inability to set different virtual desktop folders and widgets.

Personally it is blocking enough that I am still on kde 4.

Martin and David seemed interested in the beginning but afterwards it seems they  vanished.

(In reply to Canoe from comment #253)
> What's the official stance on this bug now that a new plasmoid has been
> released that serves this purpose?
> 
> http://www.kdeblog.com/vallpaper-un-fondo-de-pantalla-diferente-para-
> escritorio.html

This does not work on Kubuntu Xenial and only Marten's app from comment #212 works. Huge thanks to Marten!

I needed to install the following packages on a fresh Kubuntu Xenial install to compile Marten's script:

build-essential cmake extra-cmake-modules kio-dev libkf5configwidgets-dev libkf5crash-dev libkf5iconthemes-dev libkf5notifications-dev libkf5widgetsaddons-dev libkf5xmlgui-dev plasma-workspace-dev qtbase5-dev qtdeclarative5-dev

The non working virtual desktops is a nightmare.

I did not find a useful description about replacing it with activities on the internet, if there is something, that explains, how to replace the virtual desktop concept with activities easily, please post.

I only read about workarounds like https://github.com/martenjj/wallpaperswitch
but I rather like it to work in KDE, as this was always an important feature for me.

If this is a Won't fix, then I have to leave KDE and look for alternatives.

MEgg,

The instructions are in comment 214.  I can try to make it a little more understandable, but it boils down to the reader having some understanding of the workings of Linux and KDE:

1) Switch the pager from a Virtual Desktop (VD) to an Activity pager:
  - unlock the taskbar
  - right click on the pager
  - select the "Alternatives..." menu entry
  - click "Activity Pager" and then the "Switch" button
  => now the pager tracks activities
  While there, right click on the pager again, select "Activity Pager Settings..." and configure to taste.

2) Move to a single Virtual Desktop, so each Activity = 1 VD = 1 screen
  - System Settings => Desktop Behavior => Virtual Desktops, reduce to 1.
  
3) Create as many activities as you need "screens" (same number as the qty of
   VDs you used to use);
  - System Settings => Desktop Behavior => Activities, create and name as needed.
  Now you see the Activities in your pager, and from the pager point of view
  it's as before except activities replaced VDs.   
  
4) Enable the mouse wheel to switch between activities
  - Right click on the desktop background => Configure Desktop
  - Select the "Mouse Actions" tab
  - Item "Vertical-Scroll", select "Switch Activity"
  IMPORTANT: this setting is per activity. So you need to repeat this for all
  the created activities.

If you want to switch between Activities using your keyboard, use meta+Tab and meta+Shift+Tab. Or, as I did: a right-click on the desktop, go to Activities, and then Settings, and change these shortcuts to Ctrl+Alt+[Right arrow] and Ctrl+Alt+[Left arrow]. These are the commands I used to use back in the earlier times to page between Virtual Desktops.

(In reply to Dngrsone from comment #257)
> MEgg,
[...]
> If you want to switch between Activities using your keyboard, use meta+Tab
> and meta+Shift+Tab. Or, as I did: a right-click on the desktop, go to
> Activities, and then Settings, and change these shortcuts to Ctrl+Alt+[Right
> arrow] and Ctrl+Alt+[Left arrow]. These are the commands I used to use back
> in the earlier times to page between Virtual Desktops.

Ok now I am able to switch activities with META-F9 and META-F10.
But what I am still missing: the display of the previsous virtual desktops in the panel.
This was the simple 4 by 4 square, where I could simply see the current selected virtual desktop.
Is there something similar with activities for the panel?

BR and thanks for the help

Found the Activity Pager Widget but this always appears on the right side of the panel and even by seleting it longer I cannot move it!

Can I position the widget in the panel? (I somehow remember that this was working
in previous KDE versions)

(In reply to MEgg from comment #259)
> Found the Activity Pager Widget but this always appears on the right side of
> the panel and even by seleting it longer I cannot move it!
> 
> Can I position the widget in the panel? (I somehow remember that this was
> working
> in previous KDE versions)

Also solved that.

I never used the switcher; though I wouldn't be surprised if someone made one for activities.

If you center-click on your mouse, though, there is an activity switching dialog... well, in Mint 18.2 KDE at any rate.

Hi Everyone,

"MEgg" there are at least a couple activity related "switchers", one is called "Activity Pager" that can be added to the panel or desktop. If you click the panel toolbar icon on the far right (used to be called "cashew"), then you can move panel icons and panels around including moving the "Activity Pager" to left side, which is what I have done. You can also change its settings in some nice ways too, and if you mouse scroll over that, it will rotate through the activities, or click one activity to go directly to that.

(In reply to Phil from comment #262)
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> "MEgg" there are at least a couple activity related "switchers", one is
> called "Activity Pager" that can be added to the panel or desktop. If you
> click the panel toolbar icon on the far right (used to be called "cashew"),
> then you can move panel icons and panels around including moving the
> "Activity Pager" to left side, which is what I have done. You can also
> change its settings in some nice ways too, and if you mouse scroll over
> that, it will rotate through the activities, or click one activity to go
> directly to that.

You can also right click your desktop and select "configure desktop", then "mouse actions" change the vertical-scroll option to scroll through activities, or change the middle button to change activities, etc...

Thx a lot to all posters.
I found a reasonable way to do the former virtual desktop stuff with activities.
Only the 2 x 2 graphical display is missing, the activity switcher is 4 x 1 and taking quite some space in the panel therefore.

But I can live with that for the time being.

(In reply to MEgg from comment #264)
> I found a reasonable way to do the former virtual desktop stuff with
> activities.

One important thing that is missing from the activities hack is the ability to move a window to a desktop with a single click. With activities, I have to select the alternate activity and manually deselect the second one. This is because one window can belong to two activities but not to two desktops. I like the desktop behaviour as it is faster.

Word seem's to be done.

From plasma 5.12 wayland issues :

 -No activities

Activities are probably not a must-have feature, but anyway this is annoying --for those who got accustomed to them on X11.

-Virtual Desktops

We don't have an API yet for virtual desktops, so pager is not working


So activities seem's to be dropped on wayland.Good news ?
Sorry for my english.

Since this already went under KDE 4, I am only surprised that such simple things do not work anymore.
It was much easier in the old way of working as in the new - where you have to use the activities.
Let's hope that the old way of working is possible again soon. To make it easier again.

All the activities stuff is broken with plasma wayland so this bug can be completely forgotten, the devs have to deal with bigger problem than just the wallpaper but at the same time since the proposal is to merge the activities and the virtual desktops perhaps they will solve our problem...

I hope so. Because that's how you sell your customers.

When is it coming? In version 7 or 8?

(In reply to Shriramana Sharma from comment #265)
> (In reply to MEgg from comment #264)
> > I found a reasonable way to do the former virtual desktop stuff with
> > activities.
> 
> One important thing that is missing from the activities hack is the ability
> to move a window to a desktop with a single click. With activities, I have
> to select the alternate activity and manually deselect the second one. This
> is because one window can belong to two activities but not to two desktops.
> I like the desktop behaviour as it is faster.

I am able to move a terminal window from one activity to another with the mouse
in the activity switcher.
Also the right click in the title bar -> Activities and selecting an activity
to move or show the terminal window in different activities works for me.
I am working with KDE Plasma 5.6. .
It is not clear to me what you mean with "move a window to a desktop with a single click", this was also a double click or move window in Plasma 4.11 .

Created attachment 112934 [details]
kwin script js to map desktops to activities. CHANGE activity ids to those you get at step 3)

Finally succumbed to system updates and had to upgrade to kde 5*. As immagined, this bug, which is among the most followed ones on this bug tracker, is still here.

I managed somehow to emulate essentially the whole kde4 behavior, save for a minor visual glitch while switching desktops. This is what I did:

-------

Scope and features:
-Multiple virtual desktops with separate widgets and backgrounds
-Use of standard virtual desktops pager
-Moving windows to other virtual desktops through screen border, pager and key shortcuts

How it works:
-there is a 1 to 1 mapping of activities an desktops
-each time a desktop changes, a kwin script changes the activity automatically
-windows are set to be in all activities, so a window can be moved while the underlying activity changes

Issues:
-when switching desktops, especially first time in a session, there is a short switch time between activities

How to do it:

1) Create the number of desktops you want
2) create the same number of activities
3) Get the ids of the created activities:
   $ qdbus org.kde.ActivityManager /ActivityManager/Activities ListActivities
4) Create a kwin script that changes the activity of each desktop to a different activity id. Check the attachment for an example. To learn how to create a kwin script from a js file, check: https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/KWin/Scripting#Packaging_KWin_Scripts
5) Add the script in systemsettings->Window Management->Kwin Scripts
6) In systemsettings->Window Management->Window rules, add a new rule for all windows, and in "Size&Position" set "Activity" to "Apply Initially" and "All activities"
-) Now you can setup each desktop as desired.

Todo:
Create an actual kwin script an upload it on the official website. I may do this in a few days after some deadlines.

I have to correct my previous post:
when selecting a new activity/"work space" in the title bar, I have to deselect the other one, which is a bit tedious.
Also I did not find a way to make a 2x2 switcher, it is always 4x1 such
taking a lot of space in the bar.

Will the KDE team correct anything here?

Otherwise: I am trying XFCE now and this looks better so if nothing changes
in KDE/Plasma desktop I will move on.
You get the used multiple Workspace there, can select background per workspace,
move windows to different workspace, all just as before afaics.

I have to correct my previous post:
when selecting a new activity/"work space" in the title bar, I have to deselect the other one, which is a bit tedious.
Also I did not find a way to make a 2x2 switcher, it is always 4x1 such
taking a lot of space in the bar.

Will the KDE team correct anything here?

Otherwise: I am trying XFCE now and this looks better so if nothing changes
in KDE/Plasma desktop I will move on.
You get the used multiple Workspace there, can select background per workspace,
move windows to different workspace, all just as before afaics.

(In reply to MEgg from comment #273)

hmm, a long thinking pause and then double post?

Resetting status.

another 3d party solution: https://store.kde.org/p/1197828/ https://github.com/lehklu/Vallpaper

A sad day.
After using Kubuntu / KDE since 2007 (11 years),
and being an annual contributor to both the KDE and Kubuntu projects,
 at 18.04 I have moved to Xubuntu.
 
 One reason  alone:  different wallpaper per virtual desktop.
 I spend ~14 hours a day at my desktop 
and my desktop environment (see comment 192) is a fundamental part of my intellectual day.
  
  I do definitely miss the beauty and power of KDE
  and the transition has really been a pain
  (though I took some kde tools - okular, kate, clementine, gwenview, kdiff3 etc with me).
  
 But I don't miss being forced to work the way someone else wants me to work.

Greetings,  

Please have a look at Vallpaper  
[ https://store.kde.org/search?projectSearchText=Vallpaper  ]

Easy to install,
activated and configured  via Desktop Configuration
[ set up Walpapaer Type to Valpaper 1.1.2 ]  

I use a ,folder with 2-4 images  / virtual desktop and a time to change the images 

IT WORKS !

ND

(In reply to undecidable from comment #277)
> A sad day.
> After using Kubuntu / KDE since 2007 (11 years),
> and being an annual contributor to both the KDE and Kubuntu projects,
>  at 18.04 I have moved to Xubuntu.
>  
>  One reason  alone:  different wallpaper per virtual desktop.
>  I spend ~14 hours a day at my desktop 
> and my desktop environment (see comment 192) is a fundamental part of my
> intellectual day.
>   
>   I do definitely miss the beauty and power of KDE
>   and the transition has really been a pain
>   (though I took some kde tools - okular, kate, clementine, gwenview, kdiff3
> etc with me).
>   
>  But I don't miss being forced to work the way someone else wants me to work.

Nor do I. I've switched to using Trinity DE. TDE is a fork of KDE 3.5 & you can
have different wallpapers on different desktops, as well as having the usual KDE tools & sounds etc. TDE is available for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.

(In reply to wraithmonk from comment #279)
> (In reply to undecidable from comment #277)
> > A sad day.
> > After using Kubuntu / KDE since 2007 (11 years),
> > and being an annual contributor to both the KDE and Kubuntu projects,
> >  at 18.04 I have moved to Xubuntu.
> >  
> >  One reason  alone:  different wallpaper per virtual desktop.
> >  I spend ~14 hours a day at my desktop 
> > and my desktop environment (see comment 192) is a fundamental part of my
> > intellectual day.
> >   
> >   I do definitely miss the beauty and power of KDE
> >   and the transition has really been a pain
> >   (though I took some kde tools - okular, kate, clementine, gwenview, kdiff3
> > etc with me).
> >   
> >  But I don't miss being forced to work the way someone else wants me to work.
> 
> Nor do I. I've switched to using Trinity DE. TDE is a fork of KDE 3.5 & you
> can
> have different wallpapers on different desktops, as well as having the usual
> KDE tools & sounds etc. TDE is available for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.

Does this also available to windows or higher version of windows? Thanks

Carlo B.
https://amsterdamdiary.com/

Vallpaper from store.kde.org does indeed solve this problem almost perfectly.

There is no need for the core to have every possible feature when extensions can supply them, gnome is the same way.

(In reply to Rafael Kitover from comment #281)
> Vallpaper from store.kde.org does indeed solve this problem almost perfectly.
> 
> There is no need for the core to have every possible feature when extensions
> can supply them, gnome is the same way.

1.  This was a fundamental part of the desktop that was there for many years (at least since 2008), and which had become part of many people's workflow, and was removed.  That is not the same as adding a "feature".

2.  "store.kde.org" is not the repos.  I only install from the repos.  That way my system is stable and lower maintenance.  Stability and low maintenance is important to a certain class of users and a repos only policy helps that.

Unbelievable!!! Just formated and Installed Kubuntu 18.04 from 17.XX to find out that different wallpaper and also different widgets in each desktop is gone!!!

This makes my desktop almost unusable! 

COME ON!!! People are adding futures not removing them!!! I have to downgrade and stay there until you get it back... or, I have to move to XFCE... Or is it time to check how Gnome is doing these days...

WHY WHY WHY???

(In reply to J.G. from comment #283)
> Unbelievable!!! Just formated and Installed Kubuntu 18.04 from 17.XX to find
> out that different wallpaper and also different widgets in each desktop is
> gone!!!
> 
> This makes my desktop almost unusable! 
> 
> COME ON!!! People are adding futures not removing them!!! I have to
> downgrade and stay there until you get it back... or, I have to move to
> XFCE... Or is it time to check how Gnome is doing these days...
> 
> WHY WHY WHY???

It's been gone for quite some time, and unfortunately, developers have been somewhat cavalier in dismissing laments of those who miss the feature.  I'm particularly saddened by another regression: the loss of the ability to drag window tabs and thus arbitrarily group windows together.  This has been described as the consequence of some arcane coding issue, but IMO this type of excuse for disabling a feature that was critical to my normal workflow reflects badly on the project.  Pity because I like KDE and still use it.

When I mentioned on IRC that I was sticking to a prior release to avoid the regressions, I was chided for using a version that is "unsupported."  I call that irony.

I've seen in plasma-devel lists that virtual destops are beeing rewritten,
and several proposals for merging activities and virtual desktops.
So seem's that plasma devs are working on this bug and thank's to them.
Sorry for my english.

The fact that there are 285 comments so far should be significant in evaluating the importance of the "different wallpapers" feature.

Merging activities and virtual desktops is fine with me -- provided that there's a way to ignore the activities and just use virtual desktops, perhaps by having a single activity whose existence can be ignored.

(In reply to abrahams from comment #286)
> The fact that there are 285 comments so far should be significant in
> evaluating the importance of the "different wallpapers" feature.
> 
> Merging activities and virtual desktops is fine with me -- provided that
> there's a way to ignore the activities and just use virtual desktops,
> perhaps by having a single activity whose existence can be ignored.

<sigh> - Maddening.  I've rolled with the punches, grudgingly.  But historically, I've seen multiple regressions of functionality forced on users with new versions, and a dismissive attitude regarding impact.

Now I've adapted to using both activities and multiple desktops.  I can only pray that this "merge" will be elegant enough such that I won't feel like I'm getting smacked in the head.  Again.

There is a word.

Stability.

It's a thing.  It's good.

Argh! Disappeared for openSUSE Leap (15.0) too. 

I can manage without per desktop wallpaper, but removing per desktop widgets & links is a nuisance. I've tried to adjust to Activities over the years, but failed.

(In reply to Daniel Morris from comment #288)
> Argh! Disappeared for openSUSE Leap (15.0) too. 
> 
> I can manage without per desktop wallpaper, but removing per desktop widgets
> & links is a nuisance. I've tried to adjust to Activities over the years,
> but failed.

Please check my reply for the fix
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143#c271

Check this video for the results:
https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=ZrP3e_LjAhA

I just upgraded to opensuse 15.0 [ from leap 42.3 ]  .

Not impressed with the new 15.0 due to many issues with the new packages that point to the same old / unsolved  messages that are kept from one upgrade to the next . 
It seems that  the  "automated" QA is very good at forgetting the users as well as the regression testing .

I was one of the users affected by the KDE "enhancement"  of removing the "good old"   option of having wallpaper on every desktop .
Before starting the upgrade to 15.0, some opensuse doc was recommending to switch to sddm .
With that occasion I installed the Vallpaper 1.1.12  from KDE store .

It does exactly what KDE developers  removed 3-4 releases ago .

Now I can say that for more than 4-5 weeks I am back to enjoying/using the good-old option of different wallpapers 

Vallpaper  is doing that !

Please give Vallpaper 1.1.2 a try and if you are happy  with it  add a comment to this bug . 

Maybe the KDE developers will become more sensitive to the users's concerns rather than justifying over-and-over-and-over again why they  nix their users .   

Good Luck !!!

*** Bug 398120 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I use Linux and KDE since 2001 (with Suse7.1) as the only OS and Desktop-Environment and was glad about the more and more increasing number of features and stability. There was not everything made out of gold, what was shining. But again and again a little bit waiting always helped... 

But the times change...

After OpenSuSE 13.1 (it was a great mistake from me, to change away from this version with at least a perfect KDE4.14) and Leap42.2 I now arrived at Leap15.0 with KDE 5.12.5. But the since beginning of KDE5 disappeared wonderful feature of differrent wallpapers for every desktop came almost still not back. Often waiting helped solving problems. But not now. KDE's features decrease more and more. Where will this end?

I don't want, that neither MS nor AXXle nor anything else decides, how my desktop (and computer) has to work and to look like - this worked good in the last years and was one of the main-reasons, why I changed to Linux long time ago.

On the KDE-Website is written:"We have a strong focus on finding innovative solutions to old and new problems". Well...

I really hope, that this long lasting old problem will finally find a happy end! The wheel mustn't be invented new, it is still available (KDE4.14). Why don't adapt and use it again?

Would be nice, if the developers would give a statement about this continuous problem and how they think to solve it.

Excuse please for the bad English of an old man...

ok, have now moved multiple machines and VMs to Xubuntu 18.04.
In fact is not that painful and works well.

I have created a HowTo to help others who want to efficiently make the transition without wasting time on dead ends.

The key issues that need to be addressed in moving:
a. Xfce apps are mostly too basic.
b. Configuration is more difficult but you waste less time wrestling with stuff you don't want.

Four key points:
1. You can take many Kde apps to Xubuntu
2. Some kde apps can be replaced by gtk apps that are as good or better
3. Some kde apps can be replaced by desktop independent apps that are better or much better
4. Xfce is quite configurable, but it takes longer, but you waste less time on stuff you don't want

thread is here:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2400715

Hope this helps others.

@undecidable:

Indeed, switching to a different desktop (as you suggested) is a viable solution (preferably a lightweight one), since you can use a stable desktop with KDE apps.

I didn't try Xfce recently (since I'm a KDE user for ages), but I'll give it a try.
Meanwhile, you can also, always give Trinity DE a try.
Older users among us (who was using KDE3), will find the interface familiar.
Some kind of deja vu maybe? :-)

As much as I like KDE5 bells and whistles, it's a kind of Alpha quality, ~ after 4 years of it's initial release! :-(

Thanks a lot for the hint about Trinity DE. As i know KDE3.5 from earlier times and have only good memories about, today i installed it and -voila- this will be my "new" Desktop, until the developers of the KDE5-Desktop wake up and remember to the old, still developed wheels from earlier KDE-Versions, wo are not turning in KDE5...

May be they then notice, that there are a remarkable lot of users, who wish these features in their actual desktop KDE5 without using magic-tricks or making detours etc.

(In reply to michel from comment #295)
> Thanks a lot for the hint about Trinity DE. As i know KDE3.5 from earlier
> times and have only good memories about, today i installed it and -voila-
> this will be my "new" Desktop, until the developers of the KDE5-Desktop wake
> up and remember to the old, still developed wheels from earlier
> KDE-Versions, wo are not turning in KDE5...
> 
> May be they then notice, that there are a remarkable lot of users, who wish
> these features in their actual desktop KDE5 without using magic-tricks or
> making detours etc.

Well said. 
I changed to Trinity Desktop a while ago, & at least the developers there seems to take note of what users want. So I'm happy to donate to the project.

That's right.

What a shame, that KDE-Developers think different and are not interested in users opinions but in their own interests.

I remember in other KDE-Times...

There are people who believe that the current KDE version (5), acts like a short of Trojan horse, in order to lure its users to a mobile-like interface.

At least, (at my opinion) that's what the author implies at the article from 2014 at arstechnica: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/kde-plasma-5-for-those-linux-users-undecided-on-the-kernels-future/

Notice the paragraph : "KDE is attempting to do something no other desktop in Linux has tried to date—move toward the tablet and mobile device future".

Sad but true? :-)
Well...at Linux we always have alternative solutions (as we already discussed).

For what it's worth, We're in the process of scoping out how to collapse Activities into the existing Virtual Desktops feature (without losing any features), which will restore the ability to set a different wallpaper per virtual desktop. So it's coming, not to worry!

*** Bug 371714 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Unsubscribing CC'ed user in response to abuse report.

*** Bug 402374 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hi all,

"the process of scoping out" seems to hibernate. let's hope, that he can remember us, when he wakes up...

...and informs us a little about it's status.

(In reply to michel from comment #303)
> Hi all,
> 
> "the process of scoping out" seems to hibernate. let's hope, that he can
> remember us, when he wakes up...
> 
> ...and informs us a little about it's status.

Virtual desktops are rewritten and seems to be merged with activities in plasma 5.15 but only for wayland.
Ill make a try soon with plasma-5.15 beta.
Sorry for my english.

(In reply to michel from comment #303)
More and more I get the impression, that it's like the marketing gobbledygook of Creative, when their MP3-Player buyers asked for the functionality to use their MP3 Players as USB-Drives too. 
To keep the buyers at it, they told on their Website: "Yes this will come!" 
That was 2002. And it's still not there. BTW: does Creative still sell MP3-Players?
@Nate Graham: or am I to negative or was the announcement too early (2018-10-21) and we get it much later? A status about this topic would be nice.
Just to keep in mind: in April ends the support for the 14.04 LTS Version of Kubuntu, but as long as the kde-developers try to force me to use activities, I will use KDE4. Though not for Internet Activities, of course ;)

You are not forced to use activities, see e.g. comment #276.

(In reply to aschne15 from comment #305)
> (In reply to michel from comment #303)
> ...

 and we get it much later? A status about this topic would be
> nice.
...

Perhaps they do it like some dubious insurance-companies, which wait with settling of damage cases, until the clients are died...

As an update:

In the many threads about the design of virtual desktops on wayland - there's been a lot of movement to get a unique ID assigned to virtual desktops so that we can then use that for the tie-in with plasmashell. 

There has also been a lot of planning on how to remove the duplication and crossovers between activities and virtual desktops. The end result effectively being that activities will manage virtual desktops. Windows won't be on an N activities and N VDs, but will be on N virtual desktops which implies the activity. 
Something not possible whilst keeping compatibility with the X standard for VDs and having the same cardinality.

That's the case and VDs on wayland has just been implemented. Plasma does not yet take advantage of this. I can't put a date on that.

David, thanks for the update. Great to see this feature is being worked on and an insight into the complexity. With Plasma being so elegant, its really easy to overlook how much is going on, and what a great sustained job KDE devs do to present the mirage on our screens. Thank you.

"Daniel Morris 2019-02-13 09:22:08 UTC
...
With Plasma being so elegant
..."


This cannot be said loud enough!

(In reply to michel from comment #307)
> (In reply to aschne15 from comment #305)
> > (In reply to michel from comment #303)
> > ...
> 
>  and we get it much later? A status about this topic would be
> > nice.
> ...
> 
> Perhaps they do it like some dubious insurance-companies, which wait with
> settling of damage cases, until the clients are died...

Yeah, you could be right. Today it's exactly 4.5 Years since this bug was reported. I was 49, now im 54 :)

As time goes by...

After the End of the Kubuntu LTS Version 14.04 I'm now working with lxde (it
can display different wallpapers on different desktops)

Best regards

Hi,

well, KDE-/Plasma-Developers seem to really have forgotten us - as i mentioned earlier...

"Featuritis" seems to be the new slogan, instead of for example user-friendlyness.

David Edmundson wrote this a quarter Year earlier and his statement did not expect anything good...

KDE Plasma 5.16.90 Released and still no sign of different Wallpapers. 
But "Wallpaper slideshows can now have user-chosen ordering rather than always being random." Very nice.
@Nate Graham: Hey, Nate, why don't you be honest and close this bug as "Will not be fixed"? After more than 5 years nothing will happen anyway.

You don't close an open bug just because it hasn't gotten implemented yet and people are frustrated by this. If you want the honest truth, here it is:

We know that this is an irritation and we do want to fix it. However doing so requires untangling some of the code  behind the Activities feature, which is where per/workspace wallpapers got moved to during a prior Plasma version. We understand how that this was probably a mistake, and that Activities unfortunately never got the proper support and took off like we'd hoped, and we want to merge the functionality of Activities back into Virtual Desktops, possibly under the new umbrella name "Workspaces" or something like that. This merge would result in the feature having both the features of Virtual Desktops and also Activities. We discussed this a lot at Akademy 2018 but the work got delayed by other matters, sorry about that. We hope to pick it up again, and in either case it's a requirement before we can call Wayland done (which takes on an elevated level of importance now that it's been selected as a community goal).

It's super duper frustrating to have to wait so long. I understand and sympathize. I'm going to have to ask for a bit more patience though, because we want to fix this in the right way, which takes a bit longer than just hacking it back in quickly.

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #314)
> You don't close an open bug just because it hasn't gotten implemented yet
> and people are frustrated by this. If you want the honest truth, here it is:
> 
> We know that this is an irritation and we do want to fix it. However doing
> so requires untangling some of the code  behind the Activities feature,
> which is where per/workspace wallpapers got moved to during a prior Plasma
> version. We understand how that this was probably a mistake, and that
> Activities unfortunately never got the proper support and took off like we'd
> hoped, and we want to merge the functionality of Activities back into
> Virtual Desktops, possibly under the new umbrella name "Workspaces" or
> something like that. This merge would result in the feature having both the
> features of Virtual Desktops and also Activities. We discussed this a lot at
> Akademy 2018 but the work got delayed by other matters, sorry about that. We
> hope to pick it up again, and in either case it's a requirement before we
> can call Wayland done (which takes on an elevated level of importance now
> that it's been selected as a community goal).
> 
> It's super duper frustrating to have to wait so long. I understand and
> sympathize. I'm going to have to ask for a bit more patience though, because
> we want to fix this in the right way, which takes a bit longer than just
> hacking it back in quickly.

Okay, now this is a very good explanation of what is going on.  So, once this gets worked out, the feature will be back in some future version of the desktop.

Explanations like this and a "Where we're at ..." post on occasion would help mitigate some of the frustration, I think.

Thanks

As author of Comment #4 in this very long thread, I'm disappointed that the problem remains, but at least I understand why that is  and how difficult it is to fix it piecemeal.  It's obvious that having Activities and Virtual Desktops live in different conceptual worlds creates conflicts that have proven intractable.  I look forward to the time -- hopefully soon -- when a more general framework accommodates them both and I'll be able to have different wallpapers on different desktops again.

May that day come soon.

Hello,
i'm very dissappointed too, that this problem goes on seemingly without any priority. It's not recognbised, that this wonderful feature of earlier KDE-Versions is important for very many users. It's not only the number of users in this thread, the most people missing this feature do net register and write their opinion in this kde-bugreporting-system. For example it always was a funny thing to see the eyes of "users of other operating systems", when switching from one desktop to another with different appearing background-pics. This was serveral times the beginning of questions, what this OS can do else... 

Anyway. I think, the problem persists, because nowbody of the important people of Plasma-development is really interested to solve it - contrary to all lip service.

Bye, i wish a happy new year to everybody
Michael

Did you read previous comments, especially those mentioning Vallpaper?

(In reply to Christoph Feck from comment #318)
> Did you read previous comments, especially those mentioning Vallpaper?

Why use Vallpaper as a crutch when there was already a working solution in KDE 4.
There was the following solution:


Widget Layouts and Virtual Desktops

Virtual desktops, the ability to have a separate sets of windows on separate desktops, can tie in with Activities. You can have a different activity on each virtual desktop. In Plasma Desktop 4.4, this can be configured by entering System Settings and navigating to Desktop -> Multiple Desktops, and checking Different Activity for Each Desktop.

In Plasma Desktop 4.3, You configure this by zooming out and choosing configure Plasma. Then select use a different activity on each desktop and zoom in again. 


Make sure it comes back and everything will be fine.

(In reply to Lehmeier from comment #319)

You can do this with plasma 5 by overriding kactivitymanagerd-pluginsrc config file.
You can assign one virtual desktop per activity.

My config : 

[Plugin-org.kde.ActivityManager.VirtualDesktopSwitch]
desktop-for-6038e7d7-ad9a-48e9-8f51-0e79d8cfbf0a=1
desktop-for-876b81a6-00c1-4964-9264-f74431f9ec16=2
desktop-for-d27bcd21-46cd-493c-9a15-24c47ce1b5c7=3
desktop-for-fd02e5ac-b1cd-4b05-81df-d56ac00e6b81=4

I can even have desktop cube effect when changing activity like kde4.

No.
This are no solutions. this are crutches.

(In reply to edpil02 from comment #320)
> (In reply to Lehmeier from comment #319)

...
 
> I can even have desktop cube effect when changing activity like kde4.

Yes, this was already possible under KDE 4, even without activities:

https://fitzcarraldoblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/dragging-windows-between-sides-of-the-kwin-desktop-cube/

(In reply to edpil02 from comment #320)
> (In reply to Lehmeier from comment #319)
> 
> You can do this with plasma 5 by overriding kactivitymanagerd-pluginsrc
> config file.
> You can assign one virtual desktop per activity.
> 
> My config : 
> 
> [Plugin-org.kde.ActivityManager.VirtualDesktopSwitch]
> desktop-for-6038e7d7-ad9a-48e9-8f51-0e79d8cfbf0a=1
> desktop-for-876b81a6-00c1-4964-9264-f74431f9ec16=2
> desktop-for-d27bcd21-46cd-493c-9a15-24c47ce1b5c7=3
> desktop-for-fd02e5ac-b1cd-4b05-81df-d56ac00e6b81=4
> 
> I can even have desktop cube effect when changing activity like kde4.

...I would like to have 2 activities with 6 desktop each one as I had in kde4, is it possible this?

(In reply to pier andre from comment #323)
> (In reply to edpil02 from comment #320)
> > (In reply to Lehmeier from comment #319)
> > 
> > You can do this with plasma 5 by overriding kactivitymanagerd-pluginsrc
> > config file.
> > You can assign one virtual desktop per activity.
> > 
> > My config : 
> > 
> > [Plugin-org.kde.ActivityManager.VirtualDesktopSwitch]
> > desktop-for-6038e7d7-ad9a-48e9-8f51-0e79d8cfbf0a=1
> > desktop-for-876b81a6-00c1-4964-9264-f74431f9ec16=2
> > desktop-for-d27bcd21-46cd-493c-9a15-24c47ce1b5c7=3
> > desktop-for-fd02e5ac-b1cd-4b05-81df-d56ac00e6b81=4
> > 
> > I can even have desktop cube effect when changing activity like kde4.
> 
> ...I would like to have 2 activities with 6 desktop each one as I had in
> kde4, is it possible this?

Not sure but i think it could be possible to configure 12 virtual desktops and 2 
activities ,then assign virtual desktops 1 to 6 to activity 1 and the 6 others to activity 2.

(In reply to edpil02 from comment #324)
> (In reply to pier andre from comment #323)
> > (In reply to edpil02 from comment #320)
> > > (In reply to Lehmeier from comment #319)

...

> > ...I would like to have 2 activities with 6 desktop each one as I had in
> > kde4, is it possible this?
> 
> Not sure but i think it could be possible to configure 12 virtual desktops
> and 2 
> activities ,then assign virtual desktops 1 to 6 to activity 1 and the 6
> others to activity 2.


If each desktop has its own workspace, then everything is fine. So what's the point? I don't see the point.

(In reply to Lehmeier from comment #325)
> (In reply to edpil02 from comment #324)
> > (In reply to pier andre from comment #323)
> > > (In reply to edpil02 from comment #320)
> > > > (In reply to Lehmeier from comment #319)
> 
> ...
> 
> > > ...I would like to have 2 activities with 6 desktop each one as I had in
> > > kde4, is it possible this?
> > 
> > Not sure but i think it could be possible to configure 12 virtual desktops
> > and 2 
> > activities ,then assign virtual desktops 1 to 6 to activity 1 and the 6
> > others to activity 2.
> 
> 
> If each desktop has its own workspace, then everything is fine. So what's
> the point? I don't see the point.

Activities have a option to remember the current desktops.
The goal is to keep the same config and prevent mismatch beetween  VD and activities.
For example, prevent activities to use the same desktop number.
I do this only for desktop cube effect, otherwise no effect.

Maybe a good news :

https://phabricator.kde.org/T11622

Just re-remembered this issue installing Kubuntu 20.04 as I have every LTS release since KDE 5 :-(. 

My use case is to separate the things I work on into a small number of long term buckets that I can keep separate on my screen and in my head. This doesn't sound too unusual. Both virtual desktops and activities sound like they should be able to do this but both have pain points.

Activities:
+ Customizing wallpaper and application launcher by activity is great
- Order-by-last-use makes this unusable for me with more than two activities: I can't predict which activity I'm going to move to with a "next" keypress and the keybindings to jump to a specific activity are broken for me in Kubuntu 20.04. The inability to customize transition effects means the transition doesn't help ground the user in a sequence (horizontal slide with side-by-side monitors is particularly unhelpful), and I can't even get activities in the switcher to appear in a sane order (e.g. alphabetical). This introduces a lot of cognitive overhead around a transition that breaks flow.
- Moving a window between activities is a bit clumsy due to the per-activity toggling.
- All of the UI for managing activities feels a little "unfinished" to me.

Virtual Desktops:
+ The desktop cube animation provides a great visual metaphor that keeps the relationship between the spaces clear.
+ Cycling between desktops is predictable and the key bindings work.
+ Moving windows between desktops is easy. 
- The inability to customize wallpaper by desktop means there are few visual cues as to the current location in the sequence.

For the last 4 years I've been using activities and limited myself to 2 activities to avoid the switching issues. This time I'm going with 3 virtual desktops and trying to live with the fact they all look the same. Trying either "remember desktop per activity" or vallpaper led to broken animations during transition that were more distracting for me than the benefit they provided.

I've been using KDE for 11 years now and I really do appreciate all the work the devs put in, but in this area it feels we're lacking the big picture of what user needs should be solved and how to provide functionality that works well together to meet these needs.

Bugs in History:
OpenSSL's ChangeCiphjerSpec injection: 15 years, 6 Months until solved.
To be fair, however, it must be said that the bug was not discovered until 2014. So actually 5 years and 2 Months.

Bug 341143 - Bring back per-virtual-desktop wallpapers: 5 years, 6 Month or 2015 Days. Still not solved. 
To be fair, however, it must be said that it took 2 years before users were no longer insulted and forced to use activities. So maybe it's only three years.

So congratulations and maybe you will manage to become number one and move OpenSSL to second place :)

Yeah I know: it's difficult and wayland and the fridge has defrosted and tying shoelaces always takes quite a long time, too. 

Seriously: to quote Gerry Makaro:
Explanations like this and a "Where we're at ..." post on occasion would help mitigate some of the frustration, I think.

Last Info on Topic: 2019-10-14 Thats 7 Months and 15 Days.

I'm just a user and I would like to see different wallpapers per desktop as ell but comment#329 shows that a reasonable discussion is not possible here, do this bug should be closed as WONTFIX or something because people arguing the way that 80% of the commenters here do are actually not deserving to see a fix happen. Please use your energy for something where you are appreciated and not mocked.

If people are slowly losing patience, it is because you have been reporting this bug since 2014 and have been put off and ignored ever since. It should be clear that you will become sarcastic, ironic or just frustrated.
Instead of continuing to ignore this error, you should finally solve it. 
There was already a solution for this in KDE 4.4 ( Comment 319 ), why is it not reactivated? 
With it you could give each virtual desktop its own background image, define its own desktop and adjust everything so that it was easy and clear. Working with it was a real pleasure. KDE 5 does not come along with this.

This would not only make KDE more user friendly but also regain a lot of trust.

So if you think you can ignore a problem that many people are interested in, don't be surprised if the users will turn away in the long run.
If you ignore the user with his needs, you shouldn't be surprised if the support of the users will break off in the long run.

Maybe the solution will be moved to KDE 6 or KDE 7. Let's wait and see what happens next.


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Hello

User "Robert Kaiser" seems to be in a more elevated position because he can apparently judge who deserves this function, which has been urgently requested by users for many years. He will be completely overlooked that such non-factual comments are completely OT, since this thread is not about who deserves this change and who does not, but is about when this change will finally be implemented.

The reason for not implementing the desired function is unfortunately only very general and therefore not understandable.

 The fact that there are only 330 posts so far should not lead to the assumption that not many more users want this function. However, they do not write in such a forum because they believe that there is no prospect of success anyway. It is well known that the "silent majority" rate is greater than 1:10. It is incomprehensible that the KDE makers ignore such a large number of users. User Lehmeier has already clearly shown the expected consequences. It cannot matter to the creators whether there is a risk that users will run away simply because they simply do not want to implement a function that is often requested. So far, I've only known such ignorant behavior from a city that begins with "R" and ends with "edmont" ...
 
 To reassure (top) user "Robert Kaiser": I am also a user of KDE. The first version I used was KDE2 in 2000/2001, when I completely turned my back on the established and profit-oriented competition from Redmont and Cupertino. I know a little what I'm writing about. In these almost 20 years, a lot of cliffs had to be circumnavigated, many hurdles to be overcome and a lot of patience was often required to get where we are today. We all can be proud of that. The best programmers are of no use if their product is not used. Ultimately, there was always a solution.
 
 That is why I am not giving up hope that a solution will not be found after all. However, the use of "activities" is not this solution, it would only be a crutch that is pulled by force on the hair to distract from the real problem.
 
 Bye

(Translated with Gxxgle Translate)

Is there a reason you cannot use Vallpaper? The Plasma 5 architecture is very different from KDE 4, and right now the only way to solve this issue is exactly what Vallpaper does.

(In reply to Christoph Feck from comment #333)
> Is there a reason you cannot use Vallpaper? The Plasma 5 architecture is
> very different from KDE 4, and right now the only way to solve this issue is
> exactly what Vallpaper does.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Vallpaper only enables different backgrounds which is only a small part of the problem. The key functionality issue is the loss of the capability to have different desktop setups including widgets and desktop folders.

I have long ago posted an easy workaround that solves the functionality issues by dynamically switching the activity on desktop change, which also supports different backgrounds:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143#c271

Here is the video showing desktop switching, including dragging (in my old post I got the link wrong - thanks BK for letting me know):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrP3e_LjAhA

However please note that this is still just a workaround. We need a proper solution for this bug.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Vallpaper only enables different backgrounds which
is only a small part of the problem. The key functionality issue is the loss of
the capability to have different desktop setups including widgets and desktop
folders.

This is exactly the problem that either nobody has understood or wants to understand.
I hope that it will be solved soon and that it will also be solved in the following versions KDE 6, KDE 7 etc. ,from the beginning.  Because of this functionality it was the perfect desktop for me and many others - as the comments prove.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

(In reply to Christoph Feck from comment #333)
> Is there a reason you cannot use Vallpaper? The Plasma 5 architecture is
> very different from KDE 4, and right now the only way to solve this issue is
> exactly what Vallpaper does.

as for the architecture of many buildings doesn't allow to run across them with wheelchair is wrong, the same for plasma5 architecture that doesn't allow to have different wallpapers and widgets for each desktop is also wrong, so, I hope the developers will change the next architecture to allow more things to run across :-)

How can I help to re-implement these features? I have experience with Qt framework and QML. Personally, I'm more interested in different widgets per VD, but the wallpaper per VD would be nice.

Years ago I made some patches for Kile and Umbrello applications, but I have no experience with Plasma core. Any suggestion would be welcome.

Thanks.

The prospect of the plasma getting back the functionality it had at the end of KDE 4 is fantastic. 
Anyway, I would be happy if I could soon use not only different wallpapers but also widgets and folders in the virtual desktops. If she would take care of this problem it would be great and many people would thank her.

This was already possible in KDE 4 with the feature "Different miniprograms for each desktop", which could be found under "System Preferences - Desktop Behavior - Virtual Desktops".


I can only hope that KDE will find a way to use this in future releases or that KDE5 will be available until KDE 6 - ? also have the same features as in previous versions.

You don't always have to reinvent the wheel. 
If you are still surprised that more and more users migrate from KDE, you should think about it, because it is no wonder that popular features disappear and stability suffers.



Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

*** Bug 386784 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Sorry, I'm late to the party :-) Actually I was about to write a feature request for per-VD-stuff, but then I thought, the clever guys at KDE surely have come up with something in the past - and they did :-) Took me the better part of 3 days to read all the comments.

@ Nate, David and Marco:

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #314)
> we want to merge the functionality of Activities back into Virtual Desktops,
> possibly under the new umbrella name "Workspaces" or something like that.

This really gets the hope rising - though time flies and another 10 month passed away. I guess, there must be some magic bug-number to track this merge? Only so far I could not find it. Would you please depend this bug on it?

On the other hand, I came up with another duplicate: bug 386784
As well as related oddities, that clearly invalidate comment #214 the workaround of trying to simulate virtual desktops through activities (besides missing the cool cube switcher): bug 347667 and bug 354351 (just not sure, you also want to depend them on the "elusive merge bug" or on this one?)

I would also like this feature back. Or alternatively, to have an activity switcher which is comparable in features with the "desktop grid" effect.

During work, when my desktop becomes overcrowded, I summon the desktop grid and quickly drag some windows to another desktop. This cannot be easily done with activities. Although the activity pager allows dragging, it has no preview which makes it very unpractical, also it is small.

The different background are just a clue to distinguish one desktop from the other when flipping through. Also note that Vallpaper is not compatible with desktop grid: because it changes the wallpaper for all virtual desktops depending on which is active, hence they all look have the wallpaper of the last active one in grid view.

Created attachment 131405 [details]
attachment-31302-0.html

I've seen over the past few years several comments by the Gods at KDE
either telling us that it couldn't be done, it wouldn't be done, or it is
in the works. Which is it? Are the developers so committed to a colossal
mirtake that they would "lose face" if they reverted or is it that they
think the noise will just go away? I've seen fixes by users that kind of
work but never a KDE update that includes a fix. I'd really like to know
what the developers think and if there's any possibility of getting back
one of the features that made me a KDE user nearly 25 years ago.


On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 1:58 PM lp <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> lp <paulatz@gmail.com> changed:
>
>            What    |Removed                     |Added
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                  CC|                            |paulatz@gmail.com
>
> --- Comment #341 from lp <paulatz@gmail.com> ---
> I would also like this feature back. Or alternatively, to have an activity
> switcher which is comparable in features with the "desktop grid" effect.
>
> During work, when my desktop becomes overcrowded, I summon the desktop
> grid and
> quickly drag some windows to another desktop. This cannot be easily done
> with
> activities. Although the activity pager allows dragging, it has no preview
> which makes it very unpractical, also it is small.
>
> The different background are just a clue to distinguish one desktop from
> the
> other when flipping through. Also note that Vallpaper is not compatible
> with
> desktop grid: because it changes the wallpaper for all virtual desktops
> depending on which is active, hence they all look have the wallpaper of the
> last active one in grid view.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.

I've complained about this for years.  The developers seem to believe that Activities are The Way To Go, and different wallpapers for different desktops is an Anachronism That Stands In The Way.  So they had no qualms about ditching it, because the users who relied on it were Living In The Past.  Well, I'm one of those users too.

Eliminating a feature that many people relied on for good reason and that at one time was fully supported is a very hazardous thing to do,

> Eliminating a feature that many people relied on for good reason and that at
> one time was fully supported is a very hazardous thing to do,

And this begs for a question that maybe it's clear to all other commenters, but not to me: how are such decisions taken in KDE? Who makes such decisions, and how?

> Eliminating a feature that many people relied on for good reason and that at
> one time was fully supported is a very hazardous thing to do,

And this begs for a question that maybe it's clear to all other commenters, but not to me: how are such decisions taken in KDE? Who makes such decisions, and how?

Please stop adding comments unless you can contribute new information. More  comments make it harder for anyone who wants to read them.

> if they reverted

There is no code change that could be reverted. Plasma 5 was mostly rewritten from scratch compared to Plasma 4, using QtQuick instead of QGraphicsView, and using QScreen instead of the old X11 screen code. Adding this feature requires changes and additions in multiple components.

> I'd really like to know what the developers think

Please read previous comments about the status. If there are status updates, they will be published.

(In reply to Christoph Feck from comment #346)
> Please stop adding comments unless you can contribute new information. More 
> comments make it harder for anyone who wants to read them.
> 
> > if they reverted
> 
> There is no code change that could be reverted. Plasma 5 was mostly
> rewritten from scratch compared to Plasma 4, using QtQuick instead of
> QGraphicsView, and using QScreen instead of the old X11 screen code. Adding
> this feature requires changes and additions in multiple components.
> 
> > I'd really like to know what the developers think
> 
> Please read previous comments about the status. If there are status updates,
> they will be published.

Dear Christoph,

We are almost at full 6 years for this bug, with more than 200 subscribers between this one and other duplicates of this bug. No recent update from the assignee, and the last two comments from someone from KDE, that is you, was: "use Vallpaper" - a third party hack that addresses only the cosmetic aspect of this bug and not the functionality lost due to it.
The last concrete update was in October 2019 by Nate Graham who told that there is work going on to solve the issue the right way and to be patient. The previous comment was in October 2018 saying that there was a plan and that a solution is coming. Should we expect a similar update in a month?

I realize that the wall of comments is not helpful to you, but it is pretty much the only thing that gets some feedback from KDE. I wonder if this issue would be even considered without us raising some attention to it periodically. Really, we do not ask much, just a realistic plan, and to let us know about the progress because right now it seems that, for 6 years, there has been none.

Christoph Feck! So all you can add is don't leave comments? A status update from time to time would be appreciated. The only thing tat gets a response is a few days of bitching by dozens of people who have been kept in the dark for years.

(In reply to Christoph Feck from comment #346)
> Please stop adding comments unless you can contribute new information. More 
> comments make it harder for anyone who wants to read them.
> ...
> Please read previous comments about the status. If there are status updates,
> they will be published.

The KDE developers need to know that the interest in fixing this remains high. Were we not to comment, it would look dead and ripe for closing because nobody cares. So, if you'd like to keep us quiet, please post, "We've still done nothing" comments every month or so. Until you have a fix you'd offer up as a beta test.

We've still done nothing. :)

This blog post I wrote is pretty relevant: https://pointieststick.com/2020/05/18/why-dont-you-just-fix-thing-already/

TL;DR: people capable of doing this are all working on other things which can also only be done by them which are more important and impactful, such as making the Wayland session usable. Ultimately we need more developers to keep doing stuff like that and also this.

I know that's not what people want to hear, but it's what I've got for you, sorry.

Created attachment 131482 [details]
attachment-20721-0.html

Nate Graham, I read the comments at the link you provided. I was
particularly  astounded by: "*other things were deemed either more
important or more feasible to fix by the people doing the work*".
My question is deemed by WHO? Certainly in the YEARS since developers
removed a useful and sorely missed feature, someone has had time to address
the issue. I realize that developers have decided that the wishes of the
community are less important than Anthropological Global Warming, but like
AGW, the fact that different wall papers on virtual desktops are
unimportant to users is a myth.

Yeah. I know that users sending bitches about a feature they want returned
to KDE is unproductive as far as fixing the situation, but it does surely
indicate the importance in the work flow of users.

I recommend users who are still interested in seeing the issue resolved
keep asking for progress reports and confirming that for the average user,
this is not a trivial matter.

"

On Mon, Sep 7, 2020 at 9:18 AM Nate Graham <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #350 from Nate Graham <nate@kde.org> ---
> We've still done nothing. :)
>
> This blog post I wrote is pretty relevant:
> https://pointieststick.com/2020/05/18/why-dont-you-just-fix-thing-already/
>
> TL;DR: people capable of doing this are all working on other things which
> can
> also only be done by them which are more important and impactful, such as
> making the Wayland session usable. Ultimately we need more developers to
> keep
> doing stuff like that and also this.
>
> I know that's not what people want to hear, but it's what I've got for you,
> sorry.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.

You asked, I answered.

BTW, here's a communication tip: don't bring up politics when you're trying to make a non-political point--especially not a political position that is likely to bring you into conflict with the people who you are asking to do work for you. Most KDE developers I know believe that climate change is an existential threat to the human race, and knowing that you are a climate change denier will probably make KDE developers who believe that the preservation of the human race is a worthy goal less likely to want to work on this. That was an unforced error on your part. The more negativity gets expressed, the less likely people are going to want to do free work for you. I mean, that's obvious, right?

I'm for the return of this feature but I have to agree with the previous comment on this.
That was not smart, and not doing anyone a favor...
Anyhow, I get that this is no easy task, but I think that it's a widely requested request at that point, and I think it's pretty obvious that KDE would be nothing without users so, maybe taking this demand into consideration would already be something.
Because right now you devs make it seem like a trivial thing no one cares about... Maybe you don't but a lot of users do.
Don't take it badly but I sometimes wonder it KDE devs actually do use KDE... (that doesn't apply only for KDE to be fair)

I understand that this is not an easy problem to solve and you need developers for Wayland. 
But if you don't add this feature back then it's just a sign for the users that you don't want to take the user seriously and the functionality is as good/bad as on other desktops. 

I was an enthusiastic user of KDE since KDE 2.0, and found the ideal desktop in KDE 4.14 and up. 
Unfortunately your disinterest in the user has led to you, not only me, being more and more deterred.

I switched to XFCE because you took the functionality from me and refused to restore it for about 6 years. 
Now XFCE doesn't have these functions either but at least they don't change everything with every version so that you have to reconfigure everything. 
I also suggested to add these functions there. I hope that they will be included and if so I will stay there.
Unfortunately it is driving away more and more users, although it had the potential to become the best desktop. 
You should also be aware that nothing is more difficult than getting lost users back. So it's no use if you have the best Wayland support afterwards.


I still hope that you get the point and realize that you have to be more user-oriented if you want to create the best desktop.

Anyway, I would be happy if I could use it again soon - with future prospects.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

(In reply to Lehmeier from comment #354)
> I understand that this is not an easy problem to solve and you need
> developers for Wayland. 
> But if you don't add this feature back then it's just a sign for the users
> that you don't want to take the user seriously and the functionality is as
> good/bad as on other desktops. 
> 
> I was an enthusiastic user of KDE since KDE 2.0, and found the ideal desktop
> in KDE 4.14 and up. 
> Unfortunately your disinterest in the user has led to you, not only me,
> being more and more deterred.
> 
> I switched to XFCE because you took the functionality from me and refused to
> restore it for about 6 years. 
> Now XFCE doesn't have these functions either but at least they don't change
> everything with every version so that you have to reconfigure everything. 
> I also suggested to add these functions there. I hope that they will be
> included and if so I will stay there.
> Unfortunately it is driving away more and more users, although it had the
> potential to become the best desktop. 
> You should also be aware that nothing is more difficult than getting lost
> users back. So it's no use if you have the best Wayland support afterwards.
> 
> 
> I still hope that you get the point and realize that you have to be more
> user-oriented if you want to create the best desktop.
> 
> Anyway, I would be happy if I could use it again soon - with future
> prospects.
> 
> Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)




You are right : 6 years and no different wallpaper in each virtual Desktop.

But correct me if i'm wrong, plasma 5 have been rewritten from scratch for better QT versions portage, and open source developers are not paid for this big job ;if you add bug tracking and reviews ... i think  that creates acceptance of tolerance for the devs despite i want this feature back.
Sorry for my english.

It's not only about the desktop backgrounds (XFCE 4 can do that too), it's about different applications per virtual desktop, different widgets, etc. In short, it's about the complete individualized virtual desktop.
This was available from KDE 4.14 on and was deleted without replacement. Instead, the cumbersome / imperfect activities were introduced. They started again with 0 and it was expected that they liked it - which it was not.
Criticism was ignored and until today not taken seriously, it is only played for time.
In the 6 years one could have also solved these problems. So with each version more and more users are scared away.

The fact that this is done in your spare time is very praiseworthy, but if you are doing something you should make an effort to make it better than it was before. I cannot see that here. It's a pity for all the effort you put into KDE 5. 

Please excuse that I work with a translator, but English is a catastrophe.

I never use activities and I haven't seen an explanation of them that at all suits the way I worked.  Obviously the current group of developers thinks they're great. It's  interesting and perhaps revealing that Windows 10 eventually came to provide multiple desktops, with different wallpapers a possibility. Perhaps this is an antediluvian view, but I believe that the introduction of activities has proven, ultimately, to be a step in the wrong direction.

Often the early development of a system leads to decisions being made casually because those decisions are lost in a sea of decisions and their eventual consequences are not apparent.  I think in particular of the decision of the original Unix developers to represent strings using a zero terminator rather than a length count.  They were brilliant people,yet they got this wrong.

::: to whom it may concern :::

I imagine it might lead the discussion one step further if a motivated developer could estimate the amount of effort needed to reimplement this feature. Hopefully we get a such estimation of a willing developer.

A further step forward would be if some engaged users launch a kick-starter to collect money for this task. Hopefully there is really express of interest in this feature.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
KDE always has been free software. However this shouldn't imply developers must work gratis.

@ Lehmeier : Instead, the cumbersome / imperfect activities were introduced.

No, activities was introduced in KDE 4.X and already with no big success i think ..
So,i remember that in his blog, the kde developer Aaron Seigo decided to give the users the option to merge activities and V desktops and asked  the community to test his code.
For the tests, i should add something like "Per different virtual desktop=True" in some plasma config file.
I think that the Kde team seems to have made the same error with kde5.

It is true that the activities were already introduced in KDE 4 Activities, but there was also the feature "System settings under Desktop => virtual desktops => Different mini-programs for each desktop". 
This function combined both functions - the virtual desktops and the activities, so that they were perceived as one unit. This combination was great.

After checking this box you had this function available and could customize all the workspaces completely. With programs, backgrounds, folders etc.
And that is what we want to have again. So we can customize our desktops and finally work more efficiently again.

Nobody can accuse the developers of incompetence (the work is too good for that) - but unwillingness or belief seems to know everything better (than the user) to be in the game.
If you develop something for others you should also ask yourself if this is what you want and not just make hard cuts and wonder why there is criticism - which you ignore.

If KDE would learn to not always make hard cuts with every new version, but soft transitions (so that you don't have to adapt your way of working again and again), a lot would be gained and you could also look forward to new versions - instead of thinking with fear that everything will be upset again.

Just a little thought at the end. 
Why should companies use KDE, when with every new version, extensive reconfiguration is necessary - and with it also possible training for employees? Nobody will save time and costs that are not necessary.

I apologize for chiming in as well, but I think this discussion has:
A. Gone completely out of scope and is now mostly about how devs are ignoring the plight of the common user.
B. Paints activities as this horrible failed thing that no one actually uses.

Both points are wrong. I understand that other people on this discussion think differently, so you don't need to respond about this point - I know who you are and what you think, as you've made this point very clearly in the last 350ish comments.

I personally use activities every day and they fit very nicely into my workflow in a way that per-workspace configuration doesn't.  I would very much appreciate it if in this discussion we can drop the "devs are so in love with the horrible activities idea that they ignore this great feature" line, because it is both very wrong and annoying and insulting to both other devs and other users.

I would also like to see per-virtual-desktop configuration implemented, but not instead of activities, nor instead of having a great Wayland implementation. And if it is only delivered on Wayland (as David Edmundson hinted at last year) - I think that would be fine: X11 days are numbered anyway.

Lastly, as I personally can't do the relevant work (as I'm not knowledgeable enough nor available enough) I'm going to go back in the corner again, waiting patiently and quietly. Thank you for your patience.

For many years it has sadly been the custom in software development on all platforms to neglect debugging and instead prioritize the development of new features. I had always hoped that when I started with Linux (2001) I would be exempt from this unfortunate development. With a few exceptions, that seemed to be the case.

It is unbelievable, however, that the most important GUI for Linux in particular completely neglects this principle that debugging has priority over new features. Few developers seem to want to prescribe important levers to a majority of what they should use and how.

There is no official statement. It would be interesting to know whether this attempt at user control is even known above.

If this continues, you will also have to address other addressees than "only" here in this forum.

This thread has been smoldering for years, some people promise some vague solutions, others try on the bend and break to make some crutch solutions palatable to the users.

Are we here in kindergarten or participants and also representatives of an operating system that is very much ahead of the other known platforms. Yet. If this continues indefinitely, the day is not far off when Redmont and Cupertino are on par with Linux. The GUI in particular is the first interface of an operating system that users come into contact with. However, there should not be slimmed-down minimal solutions, but something representative that you can be proud of as a long-time user. Just the thought of such a future makes me sick. These guys who appear here screwed it up with their nebulous delaying tactics, which are not followed by any deeds.

This can not be it!

Where are the key developers and project managers who take user concerns seriously and determine the direction in which KDE is headed in this case? If someone knows that and publishes it here, I would be very grateful. Let us no longer allow ourselves to be fobbed off with empty words!

Bye
Michael

P.S. The text was translated with Google Translate, as my knowledge of English has taken the same path over the years as KDE - apparently bumped into the ceiling.

I would also like to have a binding statement about KDE 5 opder later.
Unfortunately the users are ignored for years. 
Although I would rather work with KDE myself, I changed not only to Linux but also to XFCE since about 2 months. 

They can't do everything I want to do but 1. I don't have to start from scratch with every version and 2. I don't see any possibility to get the features I mentioned here in the foreseeable future.
Therefore I have entered this feature in the bugzilla of XFCE.

At the speed of KDE, those of XFCE will probably be faster, and then I would have no reason to go back - just like many others who are frustrated.

Guys it's been a long time and you can clearly see that: a) this isn't a priority for developers; b) complaining has an adverse effect on their interest

I sympathize with all of you since I used to fervently lobby for my issues. I couldn't understand why developers didn't view some of them as important. Eventually I switched my approach to trying to change as much as I could myself, although that wasn't much. After some time, that evolved into seeing that, in the greater scheme of things and life, the desire to have my computer environment be exactly how I want it to be really isn't too important.

Maybe my experience can resonate with some of you. Besides, ancient wisdom says we should try to cease worrying over all the things we have no influence over.

But if you still feel strongly about this, the only thing I see as a way out is to create a bounty of sorts that someone would then be more likely to take you up on instead of working pro bono. But as most main KDE developers are already paid to work on KDE, it would most likely have to be someone else doing the work... which given that they would not be a maintainer makes it impossible to guarantee that their patches would get accepted. So it seems to me that a reasonable path forward is to first communicate with developers if they would be open to a patch from a third-party via a bounty.

Created attachment 131531 [details]
attachment-6440-0.html

I disagree with point B. If you are right, there is no point in continuing
this argument OR to offer a bounty. The mysterious "powers that be" at KDE
will do nothing. Conversely, is there are any developers left that actually
care what the community thinks, I believe we should continue to ask
questions and voice displeasure with the lack of action. Call it a peaceful
protest.If there are a couple dozen comments on this bug every day, maybe
we will get action.


On Wed, Sep 9, 2020 at 3:44 PM Filip Fila <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #364 from Filip Fila <filipfila.kde@gmail.com> ---
> Guys it's been a long time and you can clearly see that: a) this isn't a
> priority for developers; b) complaining has an adverse effect on their
> interest
>
> I sympathize with all of you since I used to fervently lobby for my
> issues. I
> couldn't understand why developers didn't view some of them as important.
> Eventually I switched my approach to trying to change as much as I could
> myself, although that wasn't much. After some time, that evolved into
> seeing
> that, in the greater scheme of things and life, the desire to have my
> computer
> environment be exactly how I want it to be really isn't too important.
>
> Maybe my experience can resonate with some of you. Besides, ancient wisdom
> says
> we should try to cease worrying over all the things we have no influence
> over.
>
> But if you still feel strongly about this, the only thing I see as a way
> out is
> to create a bounty of sorts that someone would then be more likely to take
> you
> up on instead of working pro bono. But as most main KDE developers are
> already
> paid to work on KDE, it would most likely have to be someone else doing the
> work... which given that they would not be a maintainer makes it
> impossible to
> guarantee that their patches would get accepted. So it seems to me that a
> reasonable path forward is to first communicate with developers if they
> would
> be open to a patch from a third-party via a bounty.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.

It has been so long since people raised that missing feature / regression.
My comment is dated january 2016 !
More than 4 years...
It looks like no official solution will be released.
I think that mainly they don't care of the users. Either they are too confident on their work or they let you choose any desktop environment you (user) prefer.
In both cases it leads to ignore what users want, leaving them to their own choice's paradigm : keep using KDE or switch to another DE.

I still experiment many annoying/unacceptable bugs in main features (icons task manager panel rearranging, resizing, screen-side change, ...).
So I don't think we'll see the return of that feature.

I'm seriously thinking about switching KDE to another DE between these : Gnome, Deepin, XFCe, LXQt. With priority given to the one that would have this feature we're requiring to KDE.

Regarding bounties: everyone who gripes about this feature being required for their continued use of KDE - lets see you put your money where your mouth is: I opened a Bounty Source for this issue here: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/92875316-bring-back-per-virtual-desktop-wallpapers

I have seeded it with $15 (which is a lot of money for me now, and especially as this is a feature I don't care that much about). If you want to put your support for making this thing happen - and for KDE - lets fund this. In 378 comments there are 111 unique email addresses, and if every one of them puts in $15 we'd have a $1600 war chest which I'm sure someone would want to grab.

Lets see if we can get this to a $1000 - I'm sure no one will say no to a thousand dollars.

@

Lets see if we can get this to a $1000 - I'm sure no one will say no to a thousand dollars(In reply to Oded Arbel from comment #367)
> Regarding bounties: everyone who gripes about this feature being required
> for their continued use of KDE - lets see you put your money where your
> mouth is: I opened a Bounty Source for this issue here:
> https://www.bountysource.com/issues/92875316-bring-back-per-virtual-desktop-
> wallpapers
> 
> I have seeded it with $15 (which is a lot of money for me now, and
> especially as this is a feature I don't care that much about). If you want
> to put your support for making this thing happen - and for KDE - lets fund
> this. In 378 comments there are 111 unique email addresses, and if every one
> of them puts in $15 we'd have a $1600 war chest which I'm sure someone would
> want to grab.
> 
> Lets see if we can get this to a $1000 - I'm sure no one will say no to a
> thousand dollars.

Ok, it done. hopefully something happened, now.

greetings

Just doubled the bounty :)

FWIW, if there were a thousand dollar bounty I would definitely take a look (and I suspect many others would too). Papa needs a new dryer! :D

Bounty or not, the upstream stance has always been:

"Lets find out why activities do not suffice for your use case and address that". This somewhat remains.
Three useful comments were made (relative shortcuts, pager and activity bar), three comments were quickly addressed.

If there are any other actually useful I apologise that they have got lost in the noise.

----

In terms of activity that /has/ happened, we are well aware that there's a frustrating and slightly broken overlap between the two.

There have been numerous talks on how to fuse activities and virtual desktops so the distinction between what's-what is clearer and we don't have the desktop stuck with this dual cardinality. The most approved suggestion would have tackled this issue. Windows would be on N VirtualDesktops, VirtualDesktops would be assigned to an activity. Then we don't have this overlap. Then it makes perfect sense for the widget configuration to drop down to the virtual desktop level without causing a feature overlap.

---

In terms of implementation:

Code wise a config option to switch to making things per VD instead of per activity is relatively trivial. Effectively you can find/replace in ShellCorona. Keeping that clean (because of the dual cardinality above) is trickier. Maybe if it was based off a config option as a lazy hack, then maybe abstracting the index could suffice.

Getting multiple desktopviews so that you also fix the DesktopCube case is slightly harder, but still pretty easy.
The hardwe part is doing that in a way that you don't ramp up your memory like crazy. We have the wallpaper in memory, wallpaper in GPU memory, plus front and back window buffers for the new DesktopView itself. A patch to get in would have to address that.

 Just add a $15 bounty too.

Created attachment 131547 [details]
attachment-12458-0.html

I'd be happy to kick in $15 if I had a commitment from KDE to fix this
within 6 months. After 6 years, I have little faith that they will follow
through.


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On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 11:42 AM edpil02 <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #372 from edpil02 <edpil02@orange.fr> ---
>  Just add a $15 bounty too.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.

I'm one of the early complainers about the loss of different wallpapers on different desktops.  I'd be quite happy if different activities could have different wallpapers and I could just think of activities as being desktops with some additional properties I'd never use.  If I could just think of activities as desktops called something else, I and presumably most of the other unhappy users would be satisfied.

> I'd be quite happy if different activities could have different wallpapers

They have since the start of 5.0.

Created attachment 131549 [details]
attachment-22886-0.html

I just added $25 to the bounty program.
I'm not a developer, just an old guy that enjoys building and maintaining
sites for friends and groups I want to support.
Way back when... I settled on a work flow that was easy and... fun. With
WordPress open on a Virtual Desktop (with a blue background), Chrome open
on another, (with a yellow background), and a Google Doc on another (with a
black background). The work flow was comfortable and intuitive.
Since losing the unique backgrounds, I find myself thinking "this used to
be easier."
I tried using "activities" but I abandoned it. It seems like adding
complexity to something that was valuable because of its simplicity.
Ditto using an app. Learning how to use the app took time and
concentration... once again, adding complexity to achieve simplicity.
My little arrangement is so simple that I get by without the feature I once
made use of.
I must admit that whenever I read through this thread, I'm a bit resentful
and more than a little perplexed. What developer thinks it's a good idea to
REMOVE features? Isn't it your job to improve and simplify your product?
Adding features and capabilities?
I changed the default $15 bounty to $25 because, in my mind, that's about
what I would be willing to pay for an app that would do nothing more than
allow unique backgrounds on Virtual Desktops.
For an eighty year old hobbyist living on Social Security, that $25 is
precious.
Forgive my rambling but one last thing... consider this a challenge. What
is it worth to YOU to get this done and put behind us?
~~~~~~~~
Donald Krebs - mobile

On Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:47 PM <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #374 from abrahams@acm.org ---
> I'm one of the early complainers about the loss of different wallpapers on
> different desktops.  I'd be quite happy if different activities could have
> different wallpapers and I could just think of activities as being desktops
> with some additional properties I'd never use.  If I could just think of
> activities as desktops called something else, I and presumably most of the
> other unhappy users would be satisfied.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.

Created attachment 131552 [details]
attachment-949-0.html

It's worth every bit of $25 to me if I had assurance that it would get
done. It's worth nothing to me without a commitment after what? 6 years?
I've lost pretty much all faith in KDE developers.


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On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 4:14 PM Donald Krebs <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org>
wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #376 from Donald Krebs <krebs.don@gmail.com> ---
> I just added $25 to the bounty program.
> I'm not a developer, just an old guy that enjoys building and maintaining
> sites for friends and groups I want to support.
> Way back when... I settled on a work flow that was easy and... fun. With
> WordPress open on a Virtual Desktop (with a blue background), Chrome open
> on another, (with a yellow background), and a Google Doc on another (with a
> black background). The work flow was comfortable and intuitive.
> Since losing the unique backgrounds, I find myself thinking "this used to
> be easier."
> I tried using "activities" but I abandoned it. It seems like adding
> complexity to something that was valuable because of its simplicity.
> Ditto using an app. Learning how to use the app took time and
> concentration... once again, adding complexity to achieve simplicity.
> My little arrangement is so simple that I get by without the feature I once
> made use of.
> I must admit that whenever I read through this thread, I'm a bit resentful
> and more than a little perplexed. What developer thinks it's a good idea to
> REMOVE features? Isn't it your job to improve and simplify your product?
> Adding features and capabilities?
> I changed the default $15 bounty to $25 because, in my mind, that's about
> what I would be willing to pay for an app that would do nothing more than
> allow unique backgrounds on Virtual Desktops.
> For an eighty year old hobbyist living on Social Security, that $25 is
> precious.
> Forgive my rambling but one last thing... consider this a challenge. What
> is it worth to YOU to get this done and put behind us?
> ~~~~~~~~
> Donald Krebs - mobile
>
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:47 PM <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:
>
> > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
> >
> > --- Comment #374 from abrahams@acm.org ---
> > I'm one of the early complainers about the loss of different wallpapers
> on
> > different desktops.  I'd be quite happy if different activities could
> have
> > different wallpapers and I could just think of activities as being
> desktops
> > with some additional properties I'd never use.  If I could just think of
> > activities as desktops called something else, I and presumably most of
> the
> > other unhappy users would be satisfied.
> >
> > --
> > You are receiving this mail because:
> > You are on the CC list for the bug.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.

>  It's worth nothing to me without a commitment after what? 6 years?
   I've lost pretty much all faith in KDE developers.

I'm not totally agree with you.
i've seen in the kde developers workflow (Phabricator) that they plan to
merge activities and v destops in wayland, the work is assigned to the dev Marco Martin who if i'm not wrong, have already written the virtual desktops API for wayland.
But the same wayland needs big improvements .

(In reply to edpil02 from comment #378)
> >  It's worth nothing to me without a commitment after what? 6 years?
>    I've lost pretty much all faith in KDE developers.
> 
> I'm not totally agree with you.
> i've seen in the kde developers workflow (Phabricator) that they plan to
> merge activities and v destops in wayland, the work is assigned to the dev
> Marco Martin who if i'm not wrong, have already written the virtual desktops
> API for wayland.
> But the same wayland needs big improvements .

That's promising… but at the same time: kwin, both X11 and Wayland, is still complete mess in regards of proper vsync and latency of its compositing (the thing that hated X11-only kwin-lowlatency fork is trying to solve: https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2020/04/on-forking/ ). Developer that tried to resolve it recently has been driven out: https://phabricator.kde.org/T11071 & https://subdiff.org/blog/2020/the-k-win-ft-project/ And previously the other one was even trying to add Vulkan (complete replacement of deprecated and abandoned OpenGL and all its interfaces) & DMABuf support but stopped all his activity in 2018: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Fredrik%20Höglund
EGL (needed for GLES and non-X11 OpenGL access, I think it also needed for handling DMABuf and switchable graphics) backend in X11 kwin is still glitchy and some effects don't work.

That's number 1 core functionality of DE: ability to see things and interact with them at all. When the most important thing is neglected for years, why would you expect anything about anything else anymore ? Since KDE4 rewrite fiasco I've seen nothing but offhand snarky excuses on every single issues, especially regressions, especially purposefully broken-by-design "we don't need it and so do you" & "it doesn't fit the VDG/HIG" (remember gigantic buttons-for-tablets-that-we-don't-even-support and "unintrusive" unrecognizable monochrome icons fads ?) ones. After KDE5 rewrite they doubled down.

Personally, I have more faith in US closing down Guantanamo Bay & all other torture and illegal imprisonment camps instead of pushing hypocritical morality doctrines/"agendas" on the world sooner than KDE's development making sense and practicality. And yes, it's a remark about inappropriateness of authority members/representatives of KDE virtue-signalling about their good-faith-in-accordance-to-good-moral-beliefs, unrelated to purpose of KDE, from official announcement channels of KDE, activity of religious cults and political parties: https://subdiff.org/blog/2019/political-activism-in-kde/

They let us ventilate here and grinning take note of our greatest displeasure and still think to themselves:

"We do what we want anyway - the complainers can't change it because they have no idea about programming and so they have to be satisfied with what we put in front of them. We also don't answer their complaints about where we would go , at some point they will shut up ... "

That is the other, unpleasant side of open source. There is no boss who brings the two worlds - programmer and user - together. In this case, the so-called community can allow itself a cheeky life of its own and implement its own thoughts, because it is modern to create new things and let the old rot, no matter how unfinished it is. The will of the majority of users is uninteresting. If both (programmer's will and user wishes) meet by chance, you're lucky.

What alternatives do you have as a KDE user? It's a dilemma.

My question, which I had asked for a longer time, about a person or a body that has the power to make decisions, has unfortunately remained unanswered. The organization of the KDE-Team was not so comprehensible for me that I could write to someone personally.

So we can only wait and hope AND

Do not forget...

It's so weird that Plasma cannot replicate a feature that it had in the past or other desktop environments had with the help of Compiz 10 years ago.
I find the whole desktop cube effect useless without different wallpapers on each side.
It just take too much time to identify which side is which and that makes the whole effect useless and it's a shame.

(In reply to John from comment #381)
> It's so weird that Plasma cannot replicate a feature that it had in the past
> or other desktop environments had with the help of Compiz 10 years ago.

Technologies change to keep up with other feature requirements, and this one was apparently not deemed important enough to keep. If you disagree, add to the bounty here: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/92875316-bring-back-per-virtual-desktop-wallpapers - it is to to $185 now, and when it's $1000 in sure some developer would want to grab it.

@Oded Arbel

Hello,

You can certainly explain to us, what kind of open source software KDE-Plasma seems to have recently started when a developer (You) asks the user to pay money in order to get a function that was once available and very popular.

That sounds like the behavior in "certain less cultivated countries", where a banknote "opens many doors". This crackling of banknotes, usually associated with dollar signs in the eye's pupils, may be very tempting for some contemporaries, but for KDE it seems rather inappropriate.

You will surely have noticed that this is not about the introduction of a new function, but a larger number of users (!!!) are requesting the reintroduction of a function that once existed and was obviously in great demand.

There are certainly several users among the posters here who, like me (since 2001 to 2020), were or still are KDE users and who have experienced a lot with KDE and with their perseverance and idealism, also and in particular through permanent references to "our" OS "to other computer users with other operating systems, which KDE has guaranteed to be in existence to this day. In this respect, the users in this post are not a complaining group of stupid schoolboys!

Such a brusque ignoring of users is a new quality in the way KDE developers deal with users. In the 20 years that I've been a exclusive (!) Linux user this year, nothing like this has happened to me. That does not suggest anything good for the future.

At some point you "gods" will find, that you are nothing without users.

Greetings from Germany
Michael


P.S. Since my knowledge of English is sufficient for survival in English-speaking countries, but not for more complex communication, this text was translated by GXXgle-translate. One may look it up.

(In reply to michel from comment #383)
> You can certainly explain to us, what kind of open source software
> KDE-Plasma seems to have recently started when a developer (You) asks the
> user to pay money in order to get a function that was once available and
> very popular.
> 
> ...
> 
> At some point you "gods" will find, that you are nothing without users.

Please stop jumping to conclusions - if you read the whole thread, you will find, that none of the developers asked for money. Instead some users started offering money as any amount of swearing and insults didn't coerce any dev up to this very day. Well you obviously prefer to give them the stick and not the carrot. Only most of you don't get, that the devs want (or need) any of it.

Then the developers should say what they need or want, so that these functions are reinstalled. 

After almost 7 years of excuses and ignoring, clear words are called for. 
Should it still be included or not - and when can we expect it?
Will it still be included in KDE 5 and will it be adopted in the future, with every new version, or only in KDE 6 or not at all.

That's all we want - just clarity.



Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

To repeat something I have said already in this thread:

There is a heavy overlap between activities and virtual desktops. The setting for individual wallpapers has not been removed, but moved to acitivites. This is a messy UX situation, that needs to be addressed at the root. I would rather solve things properly than not at all.

There was a discussion thread on where this use of activities do not suffice for user's workflows. Every constructive comment was addressed within the next release. Since then there have been no constructive comments.

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #386)
> There was a discussion thread on where this use of activities do not suffice
> for user's workflows. Every constructive comment was addressed within the
> next release. Since then there have been no constructive comments.

Perhaps the https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143#c0 (comment: 0) can be augmented with a link to a clear description on how to accomplish what we want. Several years ago, I tried to work out how to do it, trying to follow some instructions, but I was unsuccessful. If there's a simple way, I'm all for using activities. If not, then either a re-implementation is necessary or a clearer description is required. Thank you so much for remaining engaged.

Created attachment 135454 [details]
attachment-13489-0.html

I get it! What we're asking for 'just not important enough' for the last 6
years! I get it - this will NEVER be important enough

~~~~~~~~
Donald Krebs - mobile

On Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 4:49 AM pier andre <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #336 from pier andre <pier_andreit@yahoo.it> ---
> (In reply to Christoph Feck from comment #333)
> > Is there a reason you cannot use Vallpaper? The Plasma 5 architecture is
> > very different from KDE 4, and right now the only way to solve this
> issue is
> > exactly what Vallpaper does.
>
> as for the architecture of many buildings doesn't allow to run across them
> with
> wheelchair is wrong, the same for plasma5 architecture that doesn't allow
> to
> have different wallpapers and widgets for each desktop is also wrong, so, I
> hope the developers will change the next architecture to allow more things
> to
> run across :-)
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #386)
> To repeat something I have said already in this thread:
> 
> There is a heavy overlap between activities and virtual desktops. The
> setting for individual wallpapers has not been removed, but moved to
> acitivites. This is a messy UX situation, that needs to be addressed at the
> root. I would rather solve things properly than not at all.
> 
> There was a discussion thread on where this use of activities do not suffice
> for user's workflows. Every constructive comment was addressed within the
> next release. Since then there have been no constructive comments.



As i already said, i can merge VD and activities to have a cube effect with different wallpapers on each face with a simple config file.
So i'm wondering why it's so difficult to bring this feature back.

The idea was not only to have different backgrounds but also to be able to design everything else individually. 

Each virtual desktop should have its own view, different widgets, documents, programmes, etc.

This is also possible with activities - but there it is neither as flexible nor as easy to handle as it was before, in KDE 4.14.

In the past, you only had to tick the box "Different activities for each virtual desktop" under System settings -> Desktop -> Virtual desktops -> "Different activities for each virtual desktop" and everything worked, but KDE Plasma (KDE 5) has to make it more complicated and unwieldy again.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

(In reply to Lehmeier from comment #390)
> The idea was not only to have different backgrounds but also to be able to
> design everything else individually. 
> 
> Each virtual desktop should have its own view, different widgets, documents,
> programmes, etc.
> 
> This is also possible with activities - but there it is neither as flexible
> nor as easy to handle as it was before, in KDE 4.14.
> 
> In the past, you only had to tick the box "Different activities for each
> virtual desktop" under System settings -> Desktop -> Virtual desktops ->
> "Different activities for each virtual desktop" and everything worked, but
> KDE Plasma (KDE 5) has to make it more complicated and unwieldy again.
> 
> Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)


I agree.
But the desktop cube effect doesn't work properly with activities.
To do that i have  check the option "Remember virtual desktops" in system settings and config each activity to have its own virtual desktop.

(In reply to edpil02 from comment #391)
> (In reply to Lehmeier from comment #390)
> > The idea was not only to have different backgrounds but also to be able to
> > design everything else individually. 
> > 
> > Each virtual desktop should have its own view, different widgets, documents,
> > programmes, etc.
> > 
> > This is also possible with activities - but there it is neither as flexible
> > nor as easy to handle as it was before, in KDE 4.14.
> > 
> > In the past, you only had to tick the box "Different activities for each
> > virtual desktop" under System settings -> Desktop -> Virtual desktops ->
> > "Different activities for each virtual desktop" and everything worked, but
> > KDE Plasma (KDE 5) has to make it more complicated and unwieldy again.
> > 
> > Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
> 
> 
> I agree.
> But the desktop cube effect doesn't work properly with activities.
> To do that i have  check the option "Remember virtual desktops" in system
> settings and config each activity to have its own virtual desktop.

(In reply to Lehmeier from comment #390)
> The idea was not only to have different backgrounds but also to be able to
> design everything else individually. 
> 
> Each virtual desktop should have its own view, different widgets, documents,
> programmes, etc.
> 
> This is also possible with activities - but there it is neither as flexible
> nor as easy to handle as it was before, in KDE 4.14.
> 
> In the past, you only had to tick the box "Different activities for each
> virtual desktop" under System settings -> Desktop -> Virtual desktops ->
> "Different activities for each virtual desktop" and everything worked, but
> KDE Plasma (KDE 5) has to make it more complicated and unwieldy again.
> 
> Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)



The desktop cube effect with activities allows me to test if I have a different activity per virtual desktop if i am not wrong, witch is the desired goal.

So i wonder why it is impossible to do what config files can.

This tracker is bananas :P Can I suggest either someone commit to reintroducing the feature or, more likely, close it WONTFIX. The endless back and forth isn't serving any purpose, and appears to be going nowhere IMHO.

"close it WONTFIX"

A little elegant way to silence users.

Then at least you know what your turn is and can look for another environment.

I had already submitted a proposal to XFCE (https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfdesktop/-/issues/75#note_22742) and it was received with interest. 
Perhaps someone else would like to support it positively. It's not KDe but you can then work sensibly again.

This discussion/dispute is fairly overwhelming, it somehow reminds me of the alt/meta key trouble (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=399375).
That being said, I'd really like different wallpapers for virtual desktops. If I understand this thread correctly, then that is also what most users would prefer.
One reason why activities are not a replacement for virtual desktops is indeed the 'desktop grid / parachute' functionality.
I personally don't think activities and virtual desktops should be merged - they have different purposes and can well coexist and be used together (that is at least my impression).
Could you maybe explain clearly what makes it so difficult to have different wallpapers for virtual desktops? I guess this thread has become such a controversy mostly because some users think this is a trifle to add.

As a long-term goal, it would be nice if something like Parachute or the Win10 windows overview page could be added to plasmashell natively, combining activities and virtual desktops in a nice and coherent UI (and supporting Wayland well), but that wish is probably far away...
I'd be interested in opinions from the Visual Desktop Group (@VDG) on this topic. Maybe that has already been considered, but I find it difficult to overview the vast landscape of design discussions, issues and feature requests.

See also:
https://github.com/tcorreabr/Parachute/discussions/29
https://phabricator.kde.org/T13037

I think it might be worth accepting that this will not be resolved until Wayland. For those of you who need this in xorg, the following will give you this functionality, and a little more in terms of the benefits of Activities. 

1. Set up four Activities, in two rows : System Settings -> Workspace Behaviour -> Activities (Activities Tab)
2. Set up four Virtual Desktops, in two rows : System Settings -> Workspace Behaviour -> Virtual Desktops
3. In the Activities section of Workspace Behaviour, click on the Switching Tab, and enable "Current Virtual Desktop: [] Remember for each activity"
4. Add a Virtual Desktop pager and an Activities pager to your toolbar.
5. Select Activity 1, and ensure Virtual Desktop 1 is also set. Set the wallpaper to your choice on Activity 1. 
6. Do the same for the rest of your activities.
7. Remove the Virtual Desktop Pager. Leave the Activities Pager on your toolbar. These are now your virtual desktops with individual wallpaper, with the added benefit of Activities segregating widgets and pinned apps etc. 
8. Go to System Settings -> Workspace Behaviour -> Desktop Effects and enable the cube animations for switching. (Optional)

Let's give the developers of this incredible platform a little respect, more so that many do it of their own free will, in their own spare time.

I doubt that there is a solution after Wayland. 
The problem has existed for 6-7 years and we have always been put off. 

My hope is that something like this will be implemented under XFCE. They are probably faster.
As far as respect is concerned, the longer it takes, the more limited it becomes.
You get respect when you respect the other person and here I see deficits.
Nobody denies that KDE used to be a very good environment, but unfortunately the user is ignored with every new version. 1.

1. the wheel is reinvented over and over again and 
2. with each new version you have to set up everything from scratch again, the old settings are not transferred or do not work.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

They have probably not understood that they should be there for the users and not vice versa.

But this is a development that can be observed everywhere, when some community has become too big. Then the "would-be gods" think they can determine where the journey goes. That may work for a while, but not in the long run. Unfortunately, this is overlooked by these rulers. 

I myself have now for some time LXDE parallel in operation, which offers this function. They are certainly on a good way - in contrast to here.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

...but the ignorance of the developers towards the users increases with every posting here...

I guess they didn't understand that they should be there for the users and not the other way around.

But this is a development you can see everywhere, when some community has become too big. Then the "would-be gods" think they can determine where the journey goes. That may work for a while, but not in the long run. Unfortunately, this is overlooked by these gentlemen. 

I myself have now for some time LXDE parallel in operation, which offer this function. They are certainly on a good way - in contrast to here.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

@canoe:

"Let's give the developers of this incredible platform a little respect, more so that many do it of their own free will, in their own spare time."

Many of us also do volunteer work in our spare time. In these difficult times, mainly to support fellow human beings who are alone or in need of help. We do this without telling anyone about it.

The last thing you need is to deal with bureaucrats who do things by the book and don't care about the people around them. Reinventing the wheel with a currently still questionable outcome is nonsense as long as the old wheel does not function acceptably.

As You can see, the developers get the same amount of respect, they give to us.

Strongly opposed to bringing this nonsense back. Changing the wallpaper should change the wallpaper, not "change the wallpaper for this particular desktop in the context of this particular display assembly, and the nowhere else." 

If you want to actually change the wallpaper, do it separately for each desktop, then for each display, then for each display assembly, then also for the login screen and again for the login screen. That was like a hundred clicks just to change the damn wallpaper! Meaning it was basically *impossible* to change the wallpaper for normal users.

Good riddance to this unmaintainable, gimmicky anti-feature. Now if only the login screen, lock screen and all displays would obey the wallpaper change, KDE will finally gain the ability to change the wallpaper.

*If you wantED (referring to the state of affairs before the change).

Most users just want to change the damn background, ONCE, and be done with it. For a long time this was impossible. Now it's at least possible to automatically propagate the change to all desktops, if not other display and login/lock.

*If you wantED (referring to the state of affairs before the change).

Most users just want to change the damn background, ONCE, and be done with it. For a long time this was impossible. Now it's at least possible to automatically propagate the change to all desktops, if not other display and login/lock.

(In reply to leftcrane from comment #402)
> Strongly opposed to bringing this nonsense back. Changing the wallpaper
> should change the wallpaper, not "change the wallpaper for this particular
> desktop in the context of this particular display assembly, and the nowhere
> else." 

The background is a visual clue for where you are.  It's ok to have a mode where you have the background for every virtual desktop/activity/lockscreen, but it is a useful feature to have it separately.

I use the Vallpaper plugin for some years now, and I'm ok if this feature is supported only by installing a plugin.

I'm not quite fine with those very biased comments. It is obvious that this feature was requested very often. Many users would like it, and it's something that should be directly available from the core, not only in some half-baked, unsupported, workaroundish plugin.
I understand your concerns that it would make changing all wallpapers at once too difficult, but this problem could be solved easily via an additional "Set as global wallpaper" or "Apply to {wallpaper number(s)}" button.
This way, we could fulfil the wishes of all users - those who like per-desktop wallpapers and those who don't.

It is not only about the wallpaper, it is about the fact that each virtual desktop can be personalised, e.g. with different wallpapers, different mini-programs, different views, etc. This was possible from about KDE 4.14 onwards and was made impossible by the premature introduction of KDE 5 / Plasma.

This was possible from about KDE 4.14 and was made impossible by the premature introduction of KDE 5 / Plasma.
If someone now says that it would be possible with the activities, they don't know the difference. The new activities are more confusing and unwieldy.

It is about a fast, clear way of working (which the activities do not provide, otherwise I would still be with KDE).

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

I agree with Lehmeier. I've just tried the Vallpaper plugin, but I'm sorry it's crap. As of Version 2.0.2, per-desktop wallpapers don't work, at least on Wayland. Adding one desktop and assigning it a custom wallpaper takes no effect, and after that the "Add" button is greyed out (even though I have 4 virtual desktops).

There is only one solution to this problem and it has to go directly into KDE5 (Plasma). The late KDE 4 version showed that it works.
If the code is changed or optimised on this occasion, that's fine with me. I just want it to work properly again - without having to use the activities.

> The background is a visual clue for where you are.

It's a bad visual cue for the following reasons:

- the desktop wallpaper might be hidden entirely by the windows.
- you have to manage wallpapers for each desktop - that's very a very time consuming way of getting a "visual cue"
- you have to remember which desktop background symbolizes which desktop.

I don't see the rationale at all here. The visual cue should provided by a panel plasmoid.

They can do that - in addition.

Don't always try to tell users how to work - when they have already found better ways !

Give them what they want (even if it is only optional), then everyone is happy and you have a few problems less!

@leftcrane.

Please do not tell others what they want. Many want this. This feature functioned already for more then 25 years (yes, it was in CDE on Unix, not so sophisticated, but you could give every desktop a different background colour).

Those who want this do know why they want it. Telling them that they do not know what they want and that you know better what they want is .........

> Don't tell users how to work ! ... (etc.)

https://xkcd.com/1172/

What kind of "work"? The only type of work that is facilitated by this gimmick is the work of endlessly fiddling with desktop backgrounds.

@leftcrane
Let's say you're up to buy a house property you order from a professional home builder that used to to many different and specific decorations in each room.
You ask him to have your living room in white, your bathroom in blue, your daughter room in pink, etc...
And the guy tells you this is nonsense and you should have the same paint/wallpaper color in every single room of your house.

This is exactly what you are saying to us, to the users, which is very annoying and obviously your behavior is dumb.
A user and a buyer will use/buy the product that meets their requirements.

Innovation can generate new needs and drop others, but removing a feature that was still being used by users should never happen, unless there is something better in replacement (which can meet their needs and requirements).
Activities and VDs have different usage goals. Not every users adhere to activities, and may prefer to use VDs instead.

Then hire a developer who will do whatever you without any questions. There are no hired hands here.

This argument has been going on for six years!!

Sad to say, the developers brought it on themselves by removing a feature that many users liked and relied on heavily. I was one of them. Unless the development team has new members, I'm afraid we're stuck with this. It's like the Catholics and the Protestants in the Middle Ages! 

An interesting alternative is the virtual desktops of Windows 10. The way that's designed is quite different from both the old KDE and the current KDE. I haven't decided which one I prefer. I definitely dislike activities, though, and never use them.

Windows is better, objectively, because it has a fully featured virtual desktop switcher. Now that WOULD be useful to have on KDE, as opposed to wasting resources on confusing gimmicks like per-desktop wallpapers.

Sometimes removing features makes sense. Only adding features and options, especially when you have a million options already, is unsustainable.

Created attachment 138263 [details]
attachment-25806-0.html

THe desktop wallpaper /might/ be hidden.  But for me it is usually not.  I
have four Virtual desktops, each with its own set of shortcuts and
widgets.  Unfortunately, FIrefox, for some reason will always show the same
icon, regardless, so when I am switching VIrtual desktops, I can't tell
immediately /which/ FIrefox profile/instance is open on that desktop.  It
is faster to identify a wallpaper instead of looking at the patter of tiny
shortcut icons.  If I have different wallpapers, I immediately know "this
is my photo editing desktop" or "this is my writing desktop".

Is it stupid?  Maybe to you.  Is it extra work?  It isn't work for me,
though it would be nice if things worked out of the box instead of me
having to do elaborate semi-effective workarounds for something that used
to work just fine.  What would be really nice if Desktop Cube worked for
the virtual desktops too.

Yes, it's so 1990's to have a process-burning graphic toy, but just like I
prefer roses in my front yard, I like playing with the fancy toy.

On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 12:58 PM leftcrane <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #410 from leftcrane <leftcrane@tutanota.com> ---
> > The background is a visual clue for where you are.
>
> It's a bad visual cue for the following reasons:
>
> - the desktop wallpaper might be hidden entirely by the windows.
> - you have to manage wallpapers for each desktop - that's very a very time
> consuming way of getting a "visual cue"
> - you have to remember which desktop background symbolizes which desktop.
>
> I don't see the rationale at all here. The visual cue should provided by a
> panel plasmoid.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.

@leftcrane
"Then hire a developer who will do whatever you without any questions. There are no hired hands here."

I have no idea what your function is here, but when you are the deciding person, then please simply say: we do not care what you want, we will not repair it, end of discussion. But do not try to excuse yourself for not doing it by explaining to others they are dumb idiots that do not understand how much better the world would be when they would except your explanation on how they should so their work.

(In reply to leftcrane from comment #413)
> > Don't tell users how to work ! ... (etc.)
> 
> https://xkcd.com/1172/
> 
> What kind of "work"? The only type of work that is facilitated by this
> gimmick is the work of endlessly fiddling with desktop backgrounds.


What kind of endless fumbling around?
The virtual desktops are set up once with wallpaper, widgets, folders, etc. and then you work effectively and only occasionally make adjustments - if necessary.

I had set up my computer from about 2014 so that I had about 10 different virtual desktops for different tasks, for example, one for office stuff, one for genealogy (here the corresponding folders and programs were open), one for video editing, etc. so that I could start as soon as I switched to the different virtual desktops.

For this there was, in the settings the function : "Different miniprograms for each desktop" Here to look up : https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/de . In the subsection "Miniprogram layouts and virtual desktops". 
This way it was easy to handle, clear and still wonderfully flexible.

When the activities under KDE 5 only worked alone, I tried to make friends with them and had to realize that they are worthless for me (in this form). 

I would like to switch back to KDE, but since KDE has so little interest in its users and prefers to play around instead of developing a reliable, productive desktop, this will probably not happen in this lifetime.
So I'll probably stay with XFCE - it doesn't have these features either, but it uses much less resources.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

> Those who want this do know why they want it. Telling them that they do not 
> know what they want and that you know better what they want is .........

> I'm afraid we're stuck with this. It's like the Catholics and the Protestants  
> in the Middle Ages!

I agree. That sums it up quite well.

Hello,

I raised the issue in a once important German Linux forum (https://www.linuxforen.de/forums/showthread.php?282581-Eigenes-Hintergrundbild-f%FCr-jeden-Bildschirm-in-KDE-Plasma&p=1859280#post1859280) and unfortunately only received a deliberately provocative answer from a formerly very knowledgeable developer. The answer is: "Program it yourself and that's it. "

What high horse are these people sitting on that they can behave so blatantly rude?

I am currently working with LXDE. There, the interaction between developers and users is completely different and very pleasant. You can also reach your goal with LXDE, even if it is (still) a bit more complicated and less comfortable.

Presumably KDE/Plasma has simply become too big that they can allow themselves to reject the concerns of users so ruthlessly.

Goodbye
Michael


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

(In reply to leftcrane from comment #403)
> Most users just want to change the damn background, ONCE, and be done with
> it.

Those users you talk of will hardly make use of a second virtual desktop let alone a grid of 6 or 9 VD. So, if the second desktop would be stuck on an old picture from some years ago, I'm sure, they'll not notice.

---

(In reply to abrahams from comment #416)
> An interesting alternative is the virtual desktops of Windows 10. The way
> that's designed is quite different from both the old KDE and the current
> KDE. I haven't decided which one I prefer.

It seems, M$ will soon show us how different backgrounds per virtual desktop is done:

"So far, the problem is that each additional desktop has the same background image as the main desktop. This makes the distinction unnecessarily difficult. Microsoft now has individual wallpapers in the works for Windows 10 21H2."

https://www.chip.de/artikel/Windows-10-Virtuelle-Desktops-perfekt-nutzen_139970875.html

Reminds me of when James Bond replies to the question, of how he knows about that top-secret technology: "I read it in the Russian translation of the manual!"

(In reply to leftcrane from comment #417)
> Windows is better, objectively, because it has a fully featured virtual
> desktop switcher. Now that WOULD be useful to have on KDE, as opposed to
> wasting resources on confusing gimmicks like per-desktop wallpapers.

Are you aware of the "virtual desktop raster" that kicks in via Ctrl+F8. It can also be attached to engage on the mouse moving into an "active corner". It will show a fullscreen desktop-switcher with neat little window previews distributed all over the place. Besides, the background also shows nicely, so that each desktop gets it's identity - if only it would have one!

I feel like what the DEVs are hardly trying to tell us is that we shall focus on the Activities features instead of VDs, because each activity has its own wallpaper, own widgets, etc.

Why not...

BUT
- why didn't they dropped the VDs from Plasma and they seem to abandon VDs ? Why can't we use the cube on activities whenever we switch activity (the cube is still linked to VDs) ?
- Why do we share same panels across all activities (we can only choose on which activities we want an icon/widget to be printed/showed except for panels themselves) ?

To me the design should be reviewed completely for KDE Plasma 6, and be as close as possible to the one used in KDE4 in which all the features we are asking for were working correctly and smoothly, without tricks/hints/add-ons.
If I remember well, KDE 5 Frameworks and Plasma teams/devs said that there were too many bugs generated by KDE4 because of its design and crossed features within VDs and Activities (that were introduced) and that the maintenance had become difficult (a nightmare ?) which explained why the KDE 5 design had been reviewed and had completely made VDs and Activities different, and focusing that Activities would replace VDs.

(In reply to Yannick from comment #424)

...

Whatever the reason, they should ensure that we can work as effectively and smoothly as we did last time with KDE 4. If the activities did what we expect, I wouldn't care if I used VD's or activities, the main thing is that you can work effectively again. In any case, they are worthless in their current state.
KDE 5 is not usable in this form and who knows when KDE 6 will come - if it will be usable at all.

By the way, it would also be nice if future versions didn't always reinvent the wheel, but were developed in such a way that you don't have to reconfigure everything with each new version, but can simply work through it.

KDE4 allowed to have one activity per virtual desktop.  That was how KDE4 brought back the different wallpapers.

The difference between activity switcher and virtual desktop switcher is just that you can switch virtual desktops also by moving your mouse to the edge of the screen.  If you could do that with activities, all would be fine.

IMHO the decision that activities and virtual desktops are something different is a mistake.  People really don't like to have two ways to do something quite similar, but not exactly the same, it's confusing.

If there's anything that will drive me from KDE    ---  which I have used exclusively since starting on Linux   ---  ( although there are quite a few innovative awfulnesses mostly related to the foul minimalist modernism ), it's not having the separate wallpapers for separate desktops that was so needed and so useful.

I shall never dream of having a use for Activities; Virtual Desktops are all I need, and the moronic decision to remove this simple ability has been confounded by the crude inability to restore this function for many years by the detestable puritans.

(In reply to Claverhouse from comment #427)

> all I need, and the moronic decision to remove this simple ability has been
> confounded by the crude inability to restore this function for many years by
> the detestable puritans.

Way to motivate developers and contributors!

"detestable puritans"? That level of vitriol, like so much of this thread, is totally uncalled for and grossly dis-repectful to the thousands of developers and contributors to KDE.

You may, at this time, in your jurisdiction, have the freedom to 'speak your mind', just as those you want to develop a feature to your want (not "need") have the freedom not to.

You also have the freedom to pay a developer(s) to write (and contribute) said feature(s), to learn C++/Qt/Plasma and develop yourself, and/or maintain a legacy version of KDE. Granted, each of those would cost a bit more effort than tossing insults onto a global bug-tracker, itself maintained by a similar small army of volunteers.

Once upon a time, the KDE developers were highly respected fellow human beings. That was at a time when they still communicated constructively and meaningfully with users and referred to their suggestions objectively.

But those times are over, as you can see here: With stupid arguments and cheeky sentences, the would-be gods appearing here and elsewhere try to keep the little users small and, above all, quiet, so that they will look up in awe at the oh-so-diligent developers high up in the heaven of the gods.

Unfortunately, this outmoded behaviour is apparently tolerated, because everything else is more important than what the users have to say.

For those who want to switch from other operating systems, this is enough to make them no longer want to switch; long-time Linux users are also considering whether it still makes sense to remain a Linux user in the face of this ignorance. And without users, the development gods can develop whatever they want, there is no one left who needs it. But then, of course, a thousand other reasons will be to blame, only no one will want to see that as a would-be-god they have driven the cart into the mud themselves.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

People - slow down.
It is true that in recent years KDE is no longer as handy and efficient as it once was with the last KDE 4. But that is no reason to become so personal, belittling and insulting.
When, after many years of testing, I decided to switch to Linux, I used XFCE. It can only handle background images and is not as customisable as KDE. But since I can only use a few things anyway and the others are too complicated under KDE, I immediately switched to XFCE.

Should KDE once again allow this simple and efficient way of working and - with each new version - stop reinventing the wheel, I will gladly come back. It would be nice if KDE would finally take care that after switching to a newer version not everything has to be reconfigured.

It would have been a help if you didn't have to update to the new version 5 and could just continue to use KDE 4. 
Unfortunately, this no longer exists and if it did, it would be replaced by Plasma (KDE 5) with the next update.

What is often forgotten: It is not only about the wallpapers but also about the fact that you could personalise every virtual desktop. With your own views and your own widgets and mini-programs. So that you had an efficient desktop on which everything could be tailored to one workspace.
For music, you had Player, Audacity and the folder view of "My Music".
For video, you had a video editing programme - one folder for music and one for video (easy to do through the folder view).
What I also appreciated with genealogy was that you had 3 folders in which you could call up your files, the genealogy programme, and Libreoffice.
For office tasks there was then the area with the usual suspects Libreoffice. Scanning and co.

... and so on.

Each area had its own layout and thus no superfluous programmes or whatever were open. It was clear what the workspace was intended and set up for.  
During the development, 1. the claim should apply: "One should do one without leaving the other. "And 2. no new version should be rolled out without at least having the functionality of the old one.

With Plasma I just have a big mess. 
On one laptop I have 2 workspace toggles because I had moved a program to another on one activity and then it wasn't there. When I looked I found it had ended up on a virtual desktop. however it got there. and no I didn't move it there by accident. 
Things like that make working very unpleasant.

KDE used to be, despite high hardware demands, the best desktop - today, unfortunately, it is only in the midfield. This is due to the abolition of "different mini-programs for each desktop" - which unfortunately makes working with KDE very unpleasant.

I hope you get the hang of it and it becomes usable again soon - and not just until the next version. 
I would like to work with KDE again - but if that is not desired, then I will have to stay with XFCE or similar - unfortunately.



Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

1. disabling per desktop wallpaper was an ill-advised choice
2. making the change irreversible was worse.
3. I don't need vitriolic comments, either

Consequently, I'd favor closing comments. There will be no resolution to the irresistible force/immovable object contest.

Meanwhile, how do I get off of the monitor-this-bug list?

(In reply to bkorb from comment #431)


...

> Meanwhile, how do I get off of the monitor-this-bug list?

--- Comment #431 from bkorb@gnu.org ---
1. disabling per desktop wallpaper was an ill-advised choice
2. making the change irreversible was worse.
3. I don't need vitriolic comments, either

Consequently, I'd favour closing comments. There will be no resolution to the
irresistible force/immovable object contest.

Meanwhile, how do I get off of the monitor-this-bug list?


It's true that it won't change because developers aren't interested in building a perfect desktop and keeping the features they want. They want the latest, hippest and hottest. 
KDE is probably more of a study than the best desktop it could be.

Re your desire to remove your address from the mailing list:

At the top right there is the "CC List: 133 users including you (edit) ".
go to "edit" and then remove your address from the mailing list.


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

I'm not a dev, I'm just a regular guy that uses KDE Plasma. I don't understand or care to understand what the technical implications are of this, I just want to be able to set the wallpaper differently between my virtual desktops. It doesn't seem to me like this should be something controversial. I appreciate that some people may want to keep the wallpaper the same across all virtual desktops which is fine, add an option for those people and everyone is happy. What are we even talking about here?

This has been going on for about seven years now, & nothing done. As far as I'm concerned, I stopped using Plasma 5 because of the devs attitude. I changed to Trinty DE, enhanced fork of the original KDE 3 & the devs actually listen!

(In reply to gmfitton from comment #434)


> I changed to Trinty DE, enhanced fork of the original KDE 3 & the devs
> actually listen!


I have heard that there is a fork of KDE 3 but I haven't found it in the Manjaro repositories yet. 

Where and how do I get it updated? 
Do I have to download something every time or do I include it in my sources? 

Can it only display the various wallpapers or also, as recently with KDE 4, various mini-programs, widgets, folders etc. ?
Do the other KDE programmes also run under it?

Is it also based on an old QT version or does it have a different basis in the meantime?

A very good alternative to KDE5 would not be bad at all.

(In reply to Adam Nicol from comment #433)


...

> ... What are we even talking about here?

We are talking about restoring features that already existed in the old KDE 4. They were easy to use and it resulted in a very effective workflow with a clear and freely configurable desktop.

At that time, activities were already in play, but they were subordinate and did not make work unnecessarily difficult - as they do today. 
Because they were connected to the virtual desktops, it seemed to be one unit, so that the activities did not stand out unpleasantly.

The point is that you could configure individual virtual desktops so that they not only had their own background image but also their own folder views, widgets, mini-programs, etc. This meant that you could configure your desktops to suit your needs.
This meant that you could customise your desktops for each individual need and thus work very effectively.

With today's plasma it is also possible, but it is more complicated, not as clear and sometimes not as cleanly implemented.

In a previous post someone wrote that it will probably come back sometime, but could not say when. 

So it may well be a long time before KDE 6, 7, 8, ...

Lehmeyer speaks from my soul. He seems to have experience and knows exactly what has disappeared, as do many of us here. In addition, many of KDE/Plasma's setting options have silently disappeared. KDE/Plasma has long since ceased to be a desktop system that can individually be customised to a large extent. These setting options and their convenient presentation have simply and silently been eliminated. If you compare the system settings with those of the past you will be astonished at all the things that have disappeared. KDE's reputation is based on earlier times and not at all on these Plasma times.

Concerning the ignorance of the developers or their unseemly answers I ask myself why the according to Wikipedia controlling groups 

"Community Working Group",
"System Administration Working Group
"User Working Group

(if they still exist at all)

are silently looking the other way and not answering the dissatisfied users in a way that can be expected in the year 2021. By this I expressly do not mean the way it has happened here so far or in the German-language forum "Linuxforen.de". This way of answering rather fits into the Middle Ages. It may be that one or the other has stopped there, the answers suggest that, but then he/they have to keep the mouth shut on the subject from the official side. It can't be the aim of those responsibles for KDE to alienate dissatisfied users by attempting to deal with them in a cheeky manner.

There is also the possibility that the KDE/Plasma organisation itself has become so big that the left hand no longer wants to know what the right hand is doing and in what way. Such arrogance has never done an organisation any good - KDE/Plasma will be no exception.

In the end, one will really have no choice but to change the GUI. When frustration and boredom dominate the work with the own computers, you have to do something. I have been a KDE user since the early beginning of the 2000s and have been through many a lean period, but as a user you were not left out to dry, unlike today. An alternative and actually worth a closer look seems to be Trinity, the continued KDE3.5. Just recently a new version was released, so they are still working on it, it's not a dead horse. However, the underpinnings are not yet clear to me, the information on their homepage is not yet meaningful enough. On the one hand, the "relapse" should remain bearable and on the other hand, it must be possible to switch without damage, which is not yet clear to me with my Tumbleweed.

LXDE is comparatively puritanical, but it runs nicely and, above all, you get exhaustive, friendly and satisfactory answers from the developers to questions about the interface, even if some things are not (yet) as they could be. On my three "second" computers I am away from KDE/Plasma for some time and now use LXDE there. The developers seem to have very ambitious goals here too, but they are also responsive to the users. A big difference to KDE/Plasma. You feel you are in good hands with LXDE - also in contrast to KDE/Plasma...

Despite some snide remarks, I have no plan or intention, to leave KDE/Plasma - to the contrary, I'm passionate about some "minor" annoyances that in my view fall short of real greatness. Still, being forced to cope with M$-Windows at work, I almost every day lament about the window frames not snapping together - arranging them on the screen just looks ugly, where I can make them easily match perfectly in KDE, no overlap, no ugly gaps, no half hidden window decorations and if I want, pixel-perfect in the middle of the screen and keeping a window on top really stays on top - in addition, I can't think of any KDE-window, that I am not allowed to resize - I can even assign rules to force it the size, I want.

In KDE 4 I was playing with a dozen of plasmoids, filling my desktop and even my screensaver. But switching to KDE5, they were just gone and I never bothered, restoring them. So I can basically do without most of them - only the comic returned recently.

I think, the idea of activities never hooked me up, because I am often switching tasks and start everything at the same time. Especially the browser is a key part of many activities. But once it is open, any window is fine, to surf to some other topic and e.g. start writing on the bug-tracker in the middle of news articles, that were found because I wanted to look up some vocabulary in a youtube video and opened a new tab for the dictionary and got carried away by pocket suggestions - you know, how this happens. But do I stick this browser-window no in the programming-activity, where I would have a hex-editor at my disposal - wait a minute ... last time I used a hex editor was probably in 2020 - and it was not for programming at all, more like analyzing the content of some broken unplayable *.mp3, that I found out, was internally not *.mp3 at all but some *.wma with digital restriction management encumbered.

Virtual desktops work great for me - everything open at ones and still assigned to some spatial distribution like a huge desk, that I sit on all day, to work, to eat, to do crosswords, to do tax refunds, to build model-toys ... stuff gets shunt aside, but usually not completely off.

To get to the point of this bug: individual backgrounds would add to the richness of VD, but they will certainly not stop me from using and loving KDE.

PS: I totally understand, that developers ignore this bug unless they really have a plan or even some working prototype to fix this. Any speculation on technical details without actually starting to work on them is just futile - it will raise hopes, that it cannot fulfill. And besides after being called names, anyone would run a mile instead of apologizing and slaving away ... There is hardly any conspiracy working in the background - it is more like the effect of setting off a stink-bomb in here.

Besides it is hard to speculate about the silent majority - maybe once this is fixed for us, the "other side" will open an equally long debated bug of how to remove all this VD stuff and bring back the "only true great activities" as they used to work in long gone KDE5. Only by then none of the people here will be around to defend, why we loathed activities.

(In reply to Holger from comment #438)

...

It is good that you can cope with it and are happy to retrain yourself each time because the developers want it that way, because of course you can work with it - but not nearly as effectively as with the last KDE 4.

But KDE stands in its own way, because no professional IT manager will take the risk of using a desktop that has to be reconfigured and the way of working changed after the next major update. He will shun these superfluous costs like the devil shuns holy water. And it is the same with private users - they want to work with it and not waste time every time to restore everything the way they are used to.

But it's also the case that many people don't even get upset about the programmers' bad information behaviour any more, because they have already turned their backs on KDE due to the programmers' ignorance.

If developers are really ignoring this bug because some are getting thin-skinned and disappointed after years of stalling and venting their frustration about it, it would show a trait that should be found in a kindergarten rather than a development team of a great desktop.

KDE should just say if it wants to restore these features as it was possible in the last KDE 4, if yes, when and if no then at least we know what KDE thinks of its users and their comments - namely nothing.

In this sense.



Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Hello,

i sent an email to the KDE/Plasma board these days, briefly outlined the situation and otherwise referred to this thread. Finally, I asked for a statement so that we users know where we stand.

The answer came surprisingly quickly.

A statement or even a decision on the direction of my request could not be made, as such decisions were discussed and made by the KDE community.

Bye
Michael

(In reply to michel from comment #440)

...

It was also written Who is responsible for what, when and how is discussed. Then one could initiate such a discussion.
It is strange, however, that this should only happen after about 7 years and that it was not discussed earlier.

(In reply to Daniel Morris from comment #428)
> You may, at this time, in your jurisdiction, have the freedom to 'speak your
> mind', just as those you want to develop a feature to your want (not "need")
> have the freedom not to.
> 
> You also have the freedom to pay a developer(s) to write (and contribute)
> said feature(s), to learn C++/Qt/Plasma and develop yourself, and/or
> maintain a legacy version of KDE. Granted, each of those would cost a bit
> more effort than tossing insults onto a global bug-tracker, itself
> maintained by a similar small army of volunteers.

...may be I'm interested to to pay a developer(s) to write and contribute for per-virtual-desktop wallpapers and widget feature in KDE.
could you please give me some information on this possibility?
1) which skills I have to ask to the developer(s)?
2) how many developers should be necessary to end the project in one year?
3) how much it would cost?
4) where can I ask for these developers?
5) have you some name to propose?
6) does KDE should approve my initiative before?
manythanks :-)

Created attachment 139324 [details]
attachment-20629-0.html

On June 10, 2021 17:42:30 Lehmeier <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143
>
> --- Comment #441 from Lehmeier <r.lehmeier@freenet.de> ---
> (In reply to michel from comment #440)
>
> ...
>
> It was also written Who is responsible for what, when and how is discussed.
> Then one could initiate such a discussion.
> It is strange, however, that this should only happen after about 7 years and
> that it was not discussed earlier.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You are on the CC list for the bug.

I would indeed like to know who makes steering decisions at KDE, and how 
they do it. Are users asked about anything, anytime?

It's slightly unfair to charge against the volunteering developers, who 
would a priori deserve appreciation, but OTOH it is unacceptable to hijack 
such a flagship project as KDE from it's users in this way. That's why it's 
important to know how is the project driven.

Activities could have been a nice and OPTIONAL addition to Plasma, but 
should have never been imposed this way because they suck in a very clear 
and unavoidable way: they only make sense with Activities-aware programs. 
My browser of choice is not part of KDE, not is my editor. They won't abide 
by whatever rules Activities will want to impose on them.

VDs worked with anything that was inside s window. They worked even with 
Emacs. They also worked with KNotes, which "lived" in non-standard windows 
(but, OK, they were a KDE program). By the way, what happened to KNotes?

So, Activities is a client lock-up kind of move much like those we (should) 
hate in Microsoft or Apple. In fact, I suspect that the people behind this 
move might have grown up "inspired" by Jobs.

KDE 5 lacks not only the usability I enjoyed there, but also lacks AmaroK 
and KNotes. At this point, it's all the same to me to stay out switch. 
Either way, the good times will be in the past.

*** Bug 438493 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Well, as one can see, the calculation of the KDE responsible persons works out. They sit out the problem, simply do nothing, the stupid users will eventually keep their mouths shut.

The once existing transparency, exemplary and appreciated by all users, has gently and quietly fallen asleep, the would-be gods no longer let them look at their cards and do what they want. If you scratch the surface, as I did in a German Linux forum, someone who seems to belong to this circle immediately feels attacked and reacts irritably and with impertinent and unobjective statements.

There is no one to turn to, who is willing and able to have an objective discussion.
And so a once great and excellent idea degenerates to a pride of place of a few, the users stand powerlessly by and fight only against impenetrable fog, what becomes of the matter "KDE" is ultimately no longer traceable, neither goals nor their realization are known.

However, such behavior is not KDE-specific. It can be found these days in every non-functioning form of government without the participation of the "subjects". Therefore, the KDE team is in good company.

We users just have to guzzle, what we are accused of.

No we don't. 
We can change, I have too - unfortunately (XfCE). 

But if you don't value your users, then you shouldn't be surprised that they leave.

Yet the trouble remains;  and is:  since most of us have neither the skills nor time to develop a retro KDE with sane defaults, keeping the things like Separate Desktop Wallpaper   

---  and a large amount of KDE puzzling updates whilst well-meant are kinda futile ( like 'Start New Instance' for items on the menubar, or the weird unique rendering  of 'Downloads' in Dolphin ) and to take away control non-reversible   ---


for those wanting KDE and only KDE, how do we find KDE forks that will include what we want   ---  and offer more control over our desktop ?  If I wanted do simply obey Developers' whims, I would have gone for Apple.

A bit of polemics, since no one here is reacting anyway: 

Can't you just take your "Activities" and shove them up your a****? 
Nobody wants them. 
Nobody needs them.
Everybody hates them. 
Even after more than 10 years of Activities, no non-KDE application worth mentioning uses them. 

My suggestion: worry about "different wallpapers and widgets on all desktops" instead.

"Activities" used to be a nice addition, but since they have apparently become the holy grail for KDE developers, you can't admit -even after almost 7 years- that it is an aberration. 

Of course, it is also possible that the KDE software developers just don't know how to do bring different wallpapers and widgets back. No one likes to admit that.

However, after 7 Years of waiting, I finally stopped my monthly donation for the KDE Project and changed this to XFCE. 

One last word to Nate Graham: If you didn't lie to us, the developers obviously lied to you and you're going to have to sit this one out. I'm sorry for you.

Another small addendum:

It is important to counterbalance the market-dominating global players by clearly showing them that they cannot deal with their "dependents" as they please; not all PC users belong to the synchronized lemming mass, but are wide awake. If this counterweight can then also keep up in principle performance-wise and on the whole also brings along a pleasant freedom, nothing should actually stand in the way of a permanent use. Also permanent word of mouth was certainly not harmful, as intensively cultivated by me for many years. Knoppix elicited more than just an "aha" from many an "ignorant" person. But the currently practiced stop/returnpath is neither a convincing argument for "new" users, nor suitable to satisfy the "old" users. Standstill means regression. The ignoramuses at KDE probably don't know that. They will learn it painfully.

I don't know if Linus Torvalds will lower himself so far into the lowlands of user problems. But before I am completely finished with Linux, he will learn from me what his would-be makers at KDE are doing with his life's work, may it interest him or not.

Bye
Michael

> LXDE works well, the communication with the developers is excellent, but the
> performance is not optimal
Probably off-topic, anyway: The performance of LXDE is brilliant, it's the desktop environment that even runs smoothly on our old Raspberry Pi 2B (one of those small ARM devices). One could say that LXDE is a bit spartan, but that's probably necessary to acheive such a high level of responsiveness, and in my opinion it provides all relevant features. - Maybe you rather meant XFCE?

@Manuel Geißer:
I may have expressed myself imprecisely: Of course LXDE runs very performant, what I meant were simply several features that are not present in contrast to KDE5. That this is to the advantage of low memory consumption and high performance is clear to me.

(In reply to michel from comment #449)
> The aforementioned Nate Graham recently reported on pointieststick.com/ with
> a silly grin that in Plasma 5.23 you can now also change the colors in menus
> independently of the selected color scheme. He probably overlooked the fact
> that he revived a feature from KDE3... If you look at the actual public
> statements of allegedly responsible people (Lydia Pintscher, Ben Cooksley,
> Nate Graham...), you will be horrified, if you compare what is said there
> with reality... They are a bit like incompetent politicians: they like to
> bask in the light of the cameras, but quickly dive when they have to make
> concrete statements, as a request I made to a board member showed. I also
> don't use the pompous name "Plasma" for this software, which is further
> slimmed down from version to version, but only KDE5, actually "KDE4 light"
> would be more appropriate...
> 
> What else can be written? The screwing of us users has reached a new, never
> thought possible dimension. My personal consequences of this catastrophe
> were as follows: Of my 5 computers in my house, 3 are now running Windows10,
> only one is still running Tumbleweed and KDE and one is still running
> OpenSuSE15.2 and LXDE. But these two will not be able to hold on for long.
> LXDE works well, the communication with the developers is excellent, but the
> performance is not optimal and KDE5 is digging its own grave, as you can see
> here. It cannot and must not be, that a new software version offers from
> time to time less possibilities than before. This only exists here with
> KDE5. Also only here with KDE5 there is the phenomenon that the hints and
> suggestions of many users to a topic are hushed up and completely ignored.
> This way goes in the wrong direction. Such a thing does not even exist with
> Windows. 
> 
> I already stopped my donations to KDE in 2015 with a message, which probably
> didn't really interest anyone due to the lack of a response - at a time, it
> was clear that the feature set of KDE5 was indiscussable compared with 4.14.
> We went through the same thing when we switched to KDE 3 and 4, but there,
> efforts were made to restore the performance range of the respective
> previous version, which also succeeded quickly and helped the two KDE
> versions to their very good reputation. Money never was a reason for me for
> using Linus, as i shurely paid much more on donations as i would have had to
> spend for Windows-Licences and the required Software.
> 
> It is a pity which way KDE goes. They are not only ruining their own
> software, but also a large part of Linux for desktop installations. Hardly
> such a computer will run without GUI and only the fewest users will want to
> permanently spoon the presented water soup KDE5. I am one of them. After 20
> years with Linux, I see the "Linux adventure" as a failure for me, a failure
> due to incompetent developers and a completely outdated communication and
> information of the developers towards the users.

I can understand your frustration with KDE 5 - I've also been annoyed with it since about 2014 and it just doesn't get any better.

But why are you switching to Windows because of it, just change the desktop, XFCE is also very good. 
Linux has nothing to do with KDE - it only provides the interface.

Hello,

thank you for the XFCE recommendation.

I switched to Windows with the three computers because it is imperative that they work in a contemporary manner. It already worked flawlessly with KDE4 and it was a pleasure to work with it. Trying around with other interfaces is currently not possible with these computers in their place.

Since the frustration with KDE5 increased more and more and there is no remedy in sight, I have now completely switched "to the enemy". There everything works reasonably well. This is perhaps the worst way, from a Linux point of view, but a workable one. Some of my acquaintances, who "defected" to OpenSuSE at my instigation years ago, have also taken the step back (which of course didn't influence my decision, I'm a "Linuxer" since the beginning of the 2000s - still...). Even they noticed after a few years of KDE experience the more and more user-unfriendly KDE5 and don't want to go downhill.

On one of my two remaining Linux machines I can try XFCE, also TDE (the continued KDE3) is worth another try, but it is also a fundamental question, if I let some people, who are far removed from reality, permanently force something on me, which I don't like - from people, who also depend on a certain degree of cooperation with users, but completely ignore this and act as if they were alone in the world. It is these ignoramuses who are ultimately responsible for the demise of KDE and, inevitably, Linux on the desktop. So they can shove their never-ending-and-never-working-story Wayland somewhere else... 

I don't have a sense of entitlement and I'm really very clear about the term OpenSource/Linux, I've also been involved with translations of KDE software, no question. Programming I can't do, I did a lot between 1982 and 2000 under DOS6/QDOS and Win95/98/2000 with Basic and compilers and on a /38 with RPG and Query and that was it - so nowadays completely uninteresting.

But I no longer want to support what is currently going on with KDE. I have long since stopped my earlier tireless advertising for OpenSuSE in particular. You can't honestly recommend something like that to anyone. The 12-15 computers switched away from Linux in my environment are perhaps only a beginning.

Bye
Michael

I used deepl to translate my opinion into English, maybe you notice that.

I don't have a sense of entitlement and I'm really very clear about the term OpenSource/Linux, I've also been involved with translations of KDE software, no question. Programming I can't do, I did a lot between 1982 and 2000 under DOS6/QDOS and Win95/98/2000 with Basic and compilers and on a /38 with RPG and Query and that was it - so nowadays completely uninteresting.

But I no longer want to support what is currently going on with KDE. I have long since stopped my earlier tireless advertising for OpenSuSE in particular. You can't honestly recommend something like that to anyone.

Bye
Michael

I can understand that, KDE 5 is also unusable for my taste, which is why I switched to XFCE. It can't do everything, but it is constantly being developed and doesn't make such big leaps as KDE.
KDE is probably losing more and more users, but the programmers don't seem to care. So don't. It's just a pity that there is no fork of KDE 4.14. I would install it again immediately.

I tried Suse a long time ago, with 4.0 (unpacked, read the manual, packed it, waited for a new version) - but it didn't convince me for long, even though I tested it again and again.

After Suse, came Debian, Ubuntu (when Unity came, I left again), Mint, Manjaro and now also Suse Tumbleweed and EndeavourOS for my daughter as a test.
So after about 25 years of dual-booting with Windows, I decided last year to switch completely to Manjaro.  So far without any regrets.

As for deepl.com, I use it too - it just does the better translations.


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Now, even Microsoft with Windows 11 is capable of having a different wallpaper per virtual desktop.
Plasma will soon be the only desktop environment for which it is impossible to have such a feature though it used to exist in KDE4.
As expected and announced in the past, KDE Team wants people to use activities instead of virtual desktops. It is obviously that today they force them to, because of technical limitations they don't want to fix.

That's how it is!
 KDE is years behind its possibilities because the developers keep reinventing the wheel and forget what the users really want - a desktop that just works and doesn't have to be completely reconfigured every few years.
If they would stick to that, that you could work with it for years without problems, then they would be the No. 1. 
But this way you only ensure that the users run away from you. Simply sad.


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

I use activities for only one thing. That's a different wallpaper for each screen. It's easy and it works just like virtual desktops. There's even a pager for the panel that works just like the virtual desktop pager.  I actually don't understand activities, how to use them, and what's different about them than virtual desktops, but I do have 4 virtual desktops with different wallpapers.

I never understood what the activities were for or how they differed from a virtual desktop. The concept is wrong from the start.

If you look at a dictionary for "activité": (Yes, I'm French...)

- [Larousse](https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/activité/947)
1) A set of phenomena by which certain forms of life, a process, a functioning are manifested: Physical activity, intellectual activity. 
2) Faculty, power to act; manifestation of this faculty: A man overflowing with activity.

- [dictionary.lerobert](https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/activite)
1) (THINGS) The faculty or fact of acting. The activity of a drug. - A volcano in activity. ➙ action.
2) Coordinated acts and works of human origin. Physical activity. The industrial activity of a region. - PLURAL The activities of sb. ➙ occupation.
3) The quality of an active person. To show great activity.
4) Situation of a person (ESPECIALLY a military person) who is exercising his employment (as opposed to retirement, availability).

An activity is not a place on which to place windows or widgets or wallpaper… That's a desktop!

The concept of "activity" would be interesting if it were rather a tool allowing to save a particular state of a work session and to come back to it later, i.e. to save the windows, widgets and wallpapers at a given moment in a database and to allow, via a graphic interface (a dashboard) to consult the list of saved activities, the various existing snapshots and to choose one of them to reopen it and resume from this state of the user session.

To be more synthetic:
1) turn on the computer
2) login + password = connection to the user account with the default activity
3) open the activity dashboard and choose the "photography" activity 
4) work on you holidays photos...
5) open the activities dashboard and choose the activity "contribute to kde", reopen the session of 2014-11-21.
6) reply to bug 341143.
7) open the activity dashboard and choose the activity "play 0ad
8) turn off the computer and go to sleep   

This is just an idea that popped into my head, so I'll just give it to you as it comes.
 
Sincerely

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #13)
> Your best bet will be to argue this line with a valid reason.
> 
> >different workspaces with different containment/wallpaper can be done with activities, and that's what's supported.
> 
> So far the only argument I've seen is "I don't see a reason to use them"
> which doesn't stand up as a reason when it solves exactly what you're asking
> for.

Desktops/workspaces do need wallpaper differentiation —as much as activities do. Saying that one should use activities for wallpapers is like saying "don't use desktops" or like saying "use workspaces instead" when one would complain that there is no activity grid and no other easy way like a shortcut to move windows between activities. Both activities and workspaces need wallpapers and grid, and "send-window" shortcut. As they are they are both imperfect and incapable of compensating each other's faults: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/rcezjw/are_activities_supposed_to_combine_with_virtual/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I totally agree with all you who express need for a visually differentiated matrix of virtual desktop & activities, at least for advanced workflows.

BUT surely David Edmundson is perfectly right, wallpaper dont differentiate anything if you work with full screen or window tiling. Plus the technical effort is not worth the result, and there are higher priority bugs to fix.

As a compromise I suppose a possible solution I suggested lately, which makes use of the new custom accent color feature:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444676

Maybe such compromising solution with plain color is less complex to implement in short term.
And it probably solves the visual needs temporarly until someone re-implements the per-desktop wallpaper again.

Besides the Rightclick-Menu on Desktop says "Configure Desktop and Wallpaper..." although the wallpaper of the actual activity is configured there. On the other hand Activity System Setting offer settings for Icon, Name and Description and Privacy.
So the structure of the virtual desktop & activity matrix is still genius but confusing.

So lets get our asses together and study the relevant source code if currently other bugs have higher priority. Personally I trust the core developers with that argument.
I already did some git clones and yes: The craft so long to learn. Thats for sure.

PS: to the conservative user base: did you ever try Activities? Or are you waiting until M$ and @ppl are copying the feature again?

En domingo, 16 de enero de 2022 15:42:37 CET, Dominik Kummer <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> escribió:

> PS: to the conservative user base: did you ever try Activities? Or are you
> waiting until M$ and @ppl are copying the feature again?

@Dominik: I am one of those users who long for KDE4, and I don't think it is a matter of being conservative. I posted reasons for why I reject Activities on the 14th of June last year (as I saw now, in an HTML-formatted email, for which I apologize).

Activities work badly in a very clear and unavoidable way: they only make sense with Activities-aware programs. My browser of choice is not part of KDE (is there a Plasma web browser currently?), nor is my editor. They won't abide by whatever rules Activities will want to impose on them.

On the other hand, VDs worked with anything that was inside a window. They worked even with Emacs. They also worked with KNotes, which, though that was (also dead now?) part of KDE, had its notes placed in non-standard windows.

And what is the gain with Activities? Filtering email boxes that belong to the current activity? Mmmmkey, not for me, but maybe for some people... Filtering files and folders? Nice, but I did that with configured widgets per Virtual Desktop together with tags.

Tags: that is a feature worth focusing on, rather than Activities. I have been waiting so long for a simple and nice way to tag files and folders... Instead, I got Nepomuk, the semantic desktop concept (hated it, with files indexer killing my CPU for no added value). That thing is gone, is it not?

So, Activities is a client lock-up kind of move much like those we (should) hate in, precisely, Microsoft or Apple.

I guess you are thinking that I am sooo conservative (I stick with Emacs, right?). Well, I try to use the best things I find. I don't use Emacs to program, but it is still the best thing for me for a bunch of uses. I rejected the "semantic desktop" because I don't need a googlesque searcher in my own PC, as if it was the outer cyber-space, because the contents of my disk are my own, up to me to keep then and organized by me, so I never thought it was a great idea.

But there is also the point of having your work-flows, specially if there was a learning (and/or configuring) curve to climb, and it hurts having to re-learn with each new release. I know that people do that all the time with M$ Office, but most of them never get to learn sh!t of how to use it well anyway.
-- 
Juan

I read your comment and I have to say that you don't know why we want the old way of working back. And yes, I have struggled with this for a few months and found the activities unacceptable in their current form.

But let's come back to your proposal.
It's not just about different backgrounds, it's about the fact that under the virtual desktops you could configure everything so that you could work very effectively. It was the best of both worlds.
The current version of the activities is a serious step backwards in terms of usability.

I used to have only the virtual desktops. Each one not only had a different wallpaper but was also uniquely personalised with different folders, applications, etc.

With KDE 4 there was a switch in the settings and you could use it to switch on the activities, so to speak. Why is it no longer possible. It worked fine and then was replaced by this rubbish.
If jamnd now thinks that the code was too confusing, then I can only say that the user doesn't care what the code looks like as long as it works as it should and if you want to optimise something then do it in such a way that it doesn't hinder your workflow or even drive you away from KDE. 
 

When I needed the desktop, I switched it, but now there are too many problems - so many problems that I have since switched to another interface.
There, with every new version, a new pig is not herded through the village and you don't have to get used to it all over again.

KDE now only has the status of a tinkering hut that cannot be recommended to anyone who wants to work seriously.

Finally, take your users seriously and don't expect that you have to get used to it every time just because a developer has his self-realisation trip.



Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

@Lehmeier @Juanma

I know exactly what you mean, I was pissed as hell as I realized that the virtual desktops did not work as expected. And to be honest, I regularly drive nuts with Akonadi. Or why Calligra, and not Koffice? Why Virtuoso? Why Baloo? Anyways, every active developer has the right to actively puzzle another vision into KDE, I guess thats the spirit. But I am pretty sure, someday I will throw my notebook out the window and go for a looong walk.

So yes, I have a convervative, stubborn and unpatient naturell, but
one day I decided to cope with Activities and thought about the possibilities. 

First I imagined my Machine as a Workshop. Activities are my Workshop Departments. Every Departments rooms are colored in different ink. VDesktops are Workbenches in those Departments, all made of wood. For every department I wear another Helmet with different Widgets on it. Screens are my different Glasses for completeness sake. Every Application is a bigger device in my Departments, which I usually dont want to move around a lot, they are grouped togheter by function and use case. So Kwin Rules are my Floor Plan to define where all Devices have to be placed, eg. Department A, Workbench 3, Shortcut Meta+X for example.
Also if I set the Department Color to lets say Green, I am very glad that I do NOT have to apply this setting for every single Desktop.
This enables me to add and remove Workbenches from my Departments without coloring them every time.

Now I have Department: "Work", "Education", "Art", "Development" (Activities)
And in every department are 3 Workbenches: "Research", "Organize", "Process"
My Floor plan sends Device Class "falkon work" into Dep. "Work" on Workbench "Research",
"falkon work" into Dep. "Work" on Workbench "Research" access Meta+1
"falkon edu" into Dep. "Education" on Workbench "Research" and "Process" access Meta+2
"falkon develop" into Dep. "Development" on Workbench "Research" and "Process" access Meta+4
(several falkons to avoid the Tab Hell)
"KDevelop" into Dep. "Development" on Workbench "Process" access Shortcut Meta+K
"kmymoney" into Dep. "Work" on Workbench "Process" access Meta+M
"dolphin /home/dom/Art" into Dep. "Art" on Workbench "Organize" access Shortcut Meta+D
"dolphin /home/dom/Dev" into Dep. "Development" on Workbench "Organize" and "Research" access Shortcut Meta+Alt+D

Meanwhile it took me years to build a useful list of Kwin Rules, but I got used to it, and those Shortcuts are deeply integrated into my brain now.
Every important Device (App) is accessible through Shortcuts.
So Meta+Alt+D beams me instant into Department "Development" and all Devices and Gadgets I need are there.
Meta+M and I am already checking the balances.

In future I would like to have the Window Accent Color synced with my Department color, otherwise I sometimes lose track which Production Line I am currently working on.

IMHO this D&A&S "Matrix/Tensor" is very usefull, but of course not for everyone.

Now lets say I want KFileDialog to enter the path "/home/dom/Dev" (or to enter the last directory linked to Activity "Development") when the File Dialog was called by an Application which is associated with the Activity "Development". Similar plans for "/home/dom/Edu" and its subdirectories which will be linked to Activity "Education". Or Meta+V Kdenlive, open a file, KFileDialog points to "/home/dom/Editing" or one of its recent subdirectories. With all sorts of desktop metadata, scripts, QML and DBus I could customize this behavior. But for KFileDialog I have to go deeper. What about Bookmarks categorized by Activity?

And yes, Nepomuk and RDF without Virtuoso. But something like GNU 3store. NoSQL, nice and thin. Btw, the "Semantic Desktop" is about giving you control over your big data back. But some folks still want to sell data services online, thats the deal.

Maybe you can find something useful in my use cases. After all I am very happy with my desktop now. Although Akonadi.

@Claverhouse but why am I so glad to have this feature now? I dont get it.

(In reply to Oded Arbel from comment #382)
> ... add to
> the bounty here:
> https://www.bountysource.com/issues/92875316-bring-back-per-virtual-desktop-
> wallpapers - it is to to $185 now, and when it's $1000 in sure some
> developer would want to grab it.

The bounty source website had apparently changed without taking into account old external links.

For developers interested in grabbing the bounty (that is still at $185) or users wanting to sweeten the deal - the updated bug bounty link is thus:

https://app.bountysource.com/issues/92875316-bring-back-per-virtual-desktop-wallpapers

I honestly didn't find activities all that useful no matter how much I tried to make sense of it. So getting rid of the activities and focusing on improving virtual desktop feature or combining those to features into one somehow makes more sense to me. If this is feasible then, I really hope this change will make it easier/possible to set different wallpaper per virtual desktop like back then. Please refer to these links below if you want to get better idea. This was just beautiful feature that no other desktops environment like Mac, Windows had (closest one was DE with a help of compiz but not quite as good as our kde's kwin) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdHOJiTkcg0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ZFrrM9Zro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOLG722muUQ

In my opinion, Plasma 4 was awesome if you didn't use activities because some people experienced some minor issues which I never had. I would be really happy if we can somehow bring back wallpaper per virtual desktop feature (even if that means we have to remove activities). Of course, it would be ideal to keep them both to be fair with those who still find activities useful. What didn't make sense the most to me was not being able to have separate account/profile per activities because without it, it's useless for my use case. What I did like about activities however was privacy settings since you can hide/suspend it from current workspace. There are pros & cons but it's a matter of which side it outweighs the other. I guess it all depends on how you use it.
Another options would be to just keep virtual workspace but have another feature to create private environment/workspace kind of like hidden folder.

This is definitely the main reason why I don't use multiple workspaces as usability definitely sucks without having a quick way to identify which workspace is which and the different wallpapers would've been the best thing for that.

I could've even used a wallpaper with a house or my favorite picture for the home one or I could've used an image editing program to add even numbers on them or other texts.

I can't believe that I had this possibility 12 years ago in Gnome 2 with Compiz, which made the cube even better, and now we still can't have that in modern desktop environments.

I know about activities, but honestly I never got into them as they seem to complicated for what I want compared to having a few workspaces that you switch between.

I hope some day somebody solves this huge usability problem for me so I can finally use workspaces again as I used to.
If I were to design this, I would've just linked each workspace with a set of wallpapers, a set of panels, a set of widgets, a set of icon shortcuts to applications and a set of folders and files that belong to it with an option for each set of things to span on multiple workspaces (to be the same one), like in the case the user wants the same panel or widgets in all or multiple workspaces.

I assume this is pretty hard to do, but I think it should solve all the problems and wishes for everybody. and in case of using the cube this would be great.
Imagine wanting to play a game and just having to switch to the "gaming" side of the cube where I have a gaming wallpaper, widgets with temperatures for when I alt-tab out of a game, shortcuts on the desktop for all my games or launchers like Steam and Lutris
I would find that pretty intuitive and easy to use.

Dear Nate Graham

You've downgraded this bug from "Severity|normal" to "wishlist", but that doesn't calm the malcontents. 

Since you are currently a member of the Kde Board, you are in a good position to put an end to this debate that has been dragging on for years. It looks like a rotten strategy, and that's not good for the atmosphere in the community.
 
So I suggest that you put to a poll:
- the question of the existence of activities,
- the question of their adoption and use
- the question of removing them in favor of virtual desktops / workspaces each with their own widgets (including wallpaper).

So everyone will be fixed once and for all and this bug can finally be solved. 

If some people don't agree with the "democratic choice", they are free to leave. Gnome also had its discontents at the beginning of Gnome Shell.

Cheers.

Dear Nate Graham

You've downgraded this bug from "Severity|normal" to "wishlist", but that doesn't calm the malcontents. 

Since you are currently a member of the Kde Board, you are in a good position to put an end to this debate that has been dragging on for years. It looks like a rotten strategy, and that's not good for the atmosphere in the community.
 
So I suggest that you put to a poll:
- the question of the existence of activities,
- the question of their adoption and use
- the question of removing them in favor of virtual desktops / workspaces each with their own widgets (including wallpaper).

So everyone will be fixed once and for all and this bug can finally be solved. 

If some people don't agree with the "democratic choice", they are free to leave. Gnome also had its discontents at the beginning of Gnome Shell.

Cheers.

I really don't get this "activities vs virtual desktops" debate. I don't see why virtual desktops (meaning different desktops with different widgets and wallpapers) couldn't exist within activities. To me it's a lazy excuse from devs to not bring back the feature we ask for.
They didn't plan for this from the start, so it's a lot of work now, so let's find an excuse, say it's because of the activities and forget about it.
Personally I use activities and I don't want (and I'm pretty sure that I don't need) to have to choose.
I just wish that with KDE6 they took that into consideration. 
But IMO I think that the main blocker right now for this feature to come back is developers ego. "we knwo what's good for you! Use activities"...

(In reply to Cedric from comment #484)
> I really don't get this "activities vs virtual desktops" debate. I don't see
> why virtual desktops (meaning different desktops with different widgets and
> wallpapers) couldn't exist within activities.

I think the same - the existence of activities doesn't negate the existence of virtual desktops, and fortunately - both exist at the same time in Plasma.

> To me it's a lazy excuse from
> devs to not bring back the feature we ask for.

I don't understand where this notion has come from - no KDE developer has ever said "activities is the replacement for per-virtual-desktop-wallpaper". The worst is that maybe someone suggested that some fraction of people who would like different wallpapers for different work areas could find activities as a useful workflow instead of this feature.

> Personally I use activities and I don't want (and I'm pretty sure that I
> don't need) to have to choose.

Same here 👍👍

> But IMO I think that the main blocker right now for this feature to come
> back is developers ego. "we knwo what's good for you! Use activities"...

Again, no one said that. I'd wish people would let that go - activities was not meant as a replacement for per-desktop wallpaper, it was created as its own unique thing that is a distinctive KDE feature and is very useful for some people, and the fact that KDE 5 both introduce activities and dropped per-desktop wallpapers is completely coincidental - these two changes just happened together in a huge version that made a lot of other changes as well.

Finally, this is your yearly reminder: if you want KDE to bring back per-virtual-dekstop wallpapers, and you can't do the work yourself - there's a bounty that is still open to encourage developers to work on this. See comment #367 and here: https://app.bountysource.com/issues/92875316-bring-back-per-virtual-desktop-wallpapers . It is currently at $185 and if you can donate to make this bounty more attractive, please do so (full disclosure - I am such a supporter).

> I don't understand where this notion has come from - no KDE developer has ever said "activities is the replacement for per-virtual-desktop-wallpaper".

The notion comes from the fact that for over a decade, whenever the issue about not being able to set a wallpaper for each virtual desktop was raised, someone from KDE team says to use activities for that.

It's literally is the first reply in the previous issue for example: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143

I remember the same arguments being thrown around 15 years ago as well. The message has been the same: we took away your ability to set wallpapers per desktop, use activities.

A beloved feature was exchanged for a feature that nobody asked for.

Correction to my previous message, here is the correct link https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343246#c1

The first reply here is similar as well https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143#c1

Different wallpapers of each VD (which existed for many years before) is somehow "huge problem" and "added complexity", but the proposed remedy aka Activities, an overly engineered behemoth that is used by a minority is somehow not an added complexity.

(In reply to Dick Tracey from comment #481)
> ...and I never saw anyone using Activities)...


Just to provide some "Spam" feedback: i do use Activities and i hope they won't go away!

Clearly Activities are not a real replacement for Virtual Desktops and it's not reasonable to ask users to try to bodge their setups into trying. The use cases are different.

This bug report is still open because bringing per-wallpaper support back to Virtual Desktops hasn't been vetoed; someone just needs to do it. More "me too!" style comments aren't going to make it happen any faster, I'm afraid.

Currently my Screen x VDesktop x Activity matrix has 3 x 3 x 4 background surfaces. I'd be pretty annoyed if I had to configure every single surface, not just 12 but 12 x 3 for every VDesktop.

I think as per Virtual Desktop Backgrounds will come back, there is also need for a config page where one can edit multiple "Surfaces" at a time (I call it "Surface" because Wayland uses the term for windows, not sure if it applies for backgrounds too)

To me a Virtual Desktop is a kind of interface into the File System, like a physical desk where all the papers are shuffled.
So yes, for example a Folder View background logically shall be per Desktop.
And yes, per Activity the File System Model shall be filtered or point to certain locations inside this examplary Folder View, to give the desktop context.
But the color or image of the background shall also be per Activity based IMHO. I personally associate types of Activities with different moods and therefore different visual framing.

This discussion is fascinating! As soon as we've ported Umbrello we should draw UML diagrams to achieve agreement and consent. Dont call it bikeshedding please..
Looking forward to KF7 though...

(In reply to Dominik Kummer from comment #497)
I agree - I would want a way to populate all desktops with most of my plasmoids and their configurations, were this implemented. Solely a few, if any, would need to differ between desktops.

(In reply to Roke Julian Lockhart Beedell from comment #499)
> (In reply to Dominik Kummer from comment #497)
> I agree - I would want a way to populate all desktops with most of my
> plasmoids and their configurations, were this implemented. Solely a few, if
> any, would need to differ between desktops.

plasmoids are already visible on all desktops. to have differents sets of plasmoids one has to use activities.

(In reply to Nick from comment #494)
> (In reply to David Edmundson from comment #2)
> > >yes, the feature has been removed and due to the huge problem and added complexity it gave, is not going back.
> > 
> > Then close the bug.
> ======================================================
> I recall the times when "per-virtual-desktop-wallpaper[s]" option was
> available. 
> I recall that I was among the many who reported that in KDE 4 that option
> was removed .
> At that time I believed that re-activating  an older[just removed] option it
> is not big deal ....
> Nowadays----several years!!!! after that KDE4 improvement--- we the users
> STILL want the option back....
> It is surprising that we the users are told---even lectured---that our
> wishes can not be satisfied due to ... !!! COMPLEXITY !!!.
> I am not aware of such discussion when the developers ... GIFTED us ....
> with  "ACTIVITIES" ....
> It was not introduced via users' votes, but  .....  via devs "desire".   
> 
> Instead, it seems that there is a NEW dev-trend of introducing new[?]
> options by removing/obsoleting existing options/packages.
> That explains why the devs use complexity  to justify why hood
> options/packages are pushed out !!! 
> 
> For a long time I use Vallpaper  [ now at 2.0.2 level  --- from kde-store ] 
> and it works beautifuly !!!
> 
> Dev-team's intransigence / unwillingness / approach / solution  / what-ever
> brings me back to many comments/aphorisms ...such as 
> 1.
>     [ Re: user's reaction to "activities" complexity,  and devs'
> justification] ...
>     What is a camel ?
>     A horse designed by a committee !
> 
> 2.
>     That's not right. That's not even wrong.
>     Wolfgang Pauli
> 
> 3. 
>    Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be
> important.
>   T. S. Eliot
> 
> 4. 
>    Don't listen to the person who has the answers; listen to the person who
> has the questions.
>   Albert Einstein 
> 
> 
> The devs should realize that it is high time to design for the users ,and 
> not for themselves !!!

i love to combine desktops and activities. its almost perfect. per-activity AND per-desktop woud be definetly too much complexity for me. but i admit that it took me a few month to figure out how to use those features and to adjust my workflow. i think the activity should give the virtual desktop context, so the desktop can adapt to my needs. Linking the file system to activities is another route back to the semantic desktop vision.

from my point of view kde developers are sharing great technology with me. the overall design and architecture is well-tailored. I use kde since 2007. and the system is getting more productive with every update.

(In reply to Dominik Kummer from comment #500)
Thank you. Apologies for my ignorance.

Just a reminder that there are options for per-desktop wallpapers, for those who need a solution now pending a fix in Plasma.  The "Vallpaper" plugin recommended earlier has not yet been updated for Plasma 6, but Wallpaper Switcher has and it is available at https://github.com/martenjj/wallpaperswitch

Please again don't comment on this bug report or bother the Plasma developers about this - it is unofficial and nothing to do with the Plasma project.

Just a reminder that there are options for per-desktop wallpapers, for those who need a solution now pending a fix in Plasma.  The "Vallpaper" plugin recommended earlier has not yet been updated for Plasma 6, but Wallpaper Switcher has and it is available at https://github.com/martenjj/wallpaperswitch

Please again don't comment on this bug report or bother the Plasma developers about this - it is unofficial and nothing to do with the Plasma project.

Just a reminder that there are options for per-desktop wallpapers, for those who need a solution now pending a fix in Plasma.  The "Vallpaper" plugin recommended earlier has not yet been updated for Plasma 6, but Wallpaper Switcher has and it is available at https://github.com/martenjj/wallpaperswitch

Please again don't comment on this bug report or bother the Plasma developers about this - it is unofficial and nothing to do with the Plasma project.

Apologies for the multiple comment submission.

Hi all, I would like to highlight that the bug title is misleading. This is not only about the wallpaper but also about having different virtual desktop content (folders, widgets).

While I'm still looking forward towards this being fixed at KDE level, temporary solutions are welcome. On that note, on Plasma 5 I managed to implement this behavior using a KWin script that changed activity at each virtual desktop change, having a 1 to 1 mapping of VDs and activities (see my comment https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143#c271 and the attachment https://bugs.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=112934). I even had a video of this working quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrP3e_LjAhA

Unfortunately this does not work on Plasma 6. I managed to change (and ultimately simplify) my script, but it triggers a nasty glitch most of the times in which the desktop continues switching back and forth. If someone has a hint on how to fix it be my guest, I added it on github: https://github.com/loopRW/KWin_virtualactivities

Cheers

(In reply to Dragan Ahmetovic from comment #507)
> Hi all, I would like to highlight that the bug title is misleading.

Since you didn't create the original issue report, and the content of the issue report is very clear that the issue is the wallpaper - then the title seems very much accurate.

The mention of "widgets" in the OP is about how desktop configuration used to work in the 4.x series, you configured the "desktop widgets" to configure your wallpaper.

The 4.x started out as a disaster and got better and better towards the end. 
In the end it was much better than KDE 5 or KDE 6.  

It was possible under ‘ Desktop -> Multiple Desktops, and checking Different Activity for Each Desktop ’ to set it up so that each virtual desktop could be set up independently. 
This applied to background images, widgets, programmes, folders etc.
It was just great to work with. There were only the virtual desktops and you had no problems with the activities, they were hidden behind the virtual desktops and just did their job - as it should be.
Then the wheel was reinvented again and nothing worked as it should.

The background images were always just one problem among many to illustrate what was going wrong here.
I'm curious to see if and when it will work again as easily as it did back then.

Maybe in KDE 7 or 8?

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

(In reply to Oded Arbel from comment #508)
Does a counterpart issue about that topic exist already? If not, I suppose one could always be created and linked here?

What does counterpart mean?

(In reply to Lehmeier from comment #511)
See https://www.google.com/search?q=define+counterpart. It's not really important to the rest of the comment, but in this context, it referred to a similar request for a slightly differing topic. (Thanks for caring, but did you really need to ask all of subscribed here, instead of Google?)