Bug 199729 - Enabling "different activities for each desktop" creates an additional activity
Summary: Enabling "different activities for each desktop" creates an additional activity
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: plasma4
Classification: Unmaintained
Component: activities (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: Compiled Sources Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords:
: 232172 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-07-11 00:28 UTC by Javier G.
Modified: 2010-06-11 01:28 UTC (History)
25 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
5 activities with 4 desktops and "Enable one activity per desktop" (420.54 KB, image/png)
2009-07-22 15:18 UTC, Anne-Marie Mahfouf
Details
Desktop 3 shows this (424.14 KB, image/png)
2009-07-22 15:18 UTC, Anne-Marie Mahfouf
Details
plasma-desktop-appletrc (5.25 KB, application/octet-stream)
2009-07-22 15:23 UTC, Anne-Marie Mahfouf
Details
Borked plasma-desktop-appletsrc file (40.80 KB, text/plain)
2009-09-15 08:06 UTC, Richard Van Den Boom
Details
Borked plasma-desktoprc (959 bytes, text/plain)
2009-09-15 08:06 UTC, Richard Van Den Boom
Details

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Description Javier G. 2009-07-11 00:28:10 UTC
Version:            (using Devel)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Compiled sources

I have set KDE to have 2 desktops.
I have created 2 different activities in total.
If I zoom out and I activate the "different activities for each desktop" option a new default activity will be created... and I ignore this third activity and I link the other 2 activities to my 2 desktops when I restart the computer/session "magically" the third activity is set as first or second desktop (I don't know if it is random).

I tested and if I disable "different activities for each desktop" option and I enable it again no more activities are created (except if you removes the third activity, case that is created a third activity again).

Another extra bug related to it is that can't be removed activities until I disable "different activities for each desktop" option.

I'm using:
Qt: 4.5.1
KDE: 4.3.60 (KDE 4.3.60 (KDE 4.4 >= 20090624))
kde4-config: 1.0
Comment 1 Florent C. 2009-07-15 11:35:08 UTC
Hi,

I have the same problem since KDE 4.3 RCs (worked fine with Betas).
I tried with 2, 3, 4 desktops, but each time I activate the "different activities for each desktop" option, one more Activity is created (if I have 4 desktops, there will be 5 activities etc.).
This is really annoying !
Comment 2 Florent C. 2009-07-15 21:06:18 UTC
My config :

Kubuntu 9.04
Qt: 4.5.1
KDE: 4.2.96 (KDE 4.2.96 (KDE 4.3 RC2))
Comment 3 Anne-Marie Mahfouf 2009-07-22 15:16:40 UTC
Confirmed, I has the same activity for all 4 desktops and I checked Enable 1 activity per desktop and now I have 5 activities see first screenshot
Desktop 3 is wrong, it has 2 half activities, see second screenshot
kdebase from 4.3branch revision 1000913
Comment 4 Anne-Marie Mahfouf 2009-07-22 15:18:11 UTC
Created attachment 35546 [details]
5 activities with 4 desktops and "Enable one activity per desktop"
Comment 5 Anne-Marie Mahfouf 2009-07-22 15:18:55 UTC
Created attachment 35547 [details]
Desktop 3 shows this
Comment 6 Anne-Marie Mahfouf 2009-07-22 15:23:01 UTC
Created attachment 35548 [details]
plasma-desktop-appletrc
Comment 7 Anne-Marie Mahfouf 2009-07-22 15:24:47 UTC
When I zoom in from last activity, I cannot see my applets in activity/desktop 1 (only the other empty desktops show) and on 2 desktops I do not have the cashew.

Not sure I make sense but it's not easy to explain.
Comment 8 Florent C. 2009-07-24 18:24:15 UTC
Problem not fixed in RC3…
Comment 9 Chrisitan Engholm 2009-07-30 09:25:06 UTC
Sometimes during the login, the new activities will be created again.
KDE 4.3-rc3. Installed using the rpm repository (Fedora 10).
Comment 10 Miha Čančula 2009-08-08 14:36:03 UTC
This bug is still present and annoying in 4.3.0 on Kubuntu 9.04. It used to work in some early beta and was really cool.
Comment 11 Bojan 2009-08-08 17:20:49 UTC
ArchLinux 64 bit 
KDE 4.3

In RC2 and RC3 everything worked fine. After i upgrade to final i delete my .kde and .kde4 folders and this bug showed up. I hope that this is helpful.
Comment 12 Martin Samek 2009-08-11 01:00:13 UTC
I can confirm this bug on Gentoo 32bit, KDE 4.3.0. One more activity is created. I started KDE 4.3 with clean profile, but without effect.
Comment 13 MohamadReza Mirdamadi 2009-08-21 16:40:20 UTC
Same issue here. I had this problem since 4.3-Beta2 up to 4.3.0 in Kububru 64bit.
Comment 14 Marcus Harrison 2009-08-22 13:11:29 UTC
I can confirm this problem in Gentoo with KDE 4.3.0 stable.
Comment 15 Alejandro Nova 2009-08-25 01:06:45 UTC
I'm experiencing this. Also, this comes with two buglets.

1. Sometimes, the fifth activity gets loaded instead of the first four I configured. That means that, randomly, I have to open the ZUI (already horribly slowed down by bug 183121 ) and move all my apps from the, once visible, now hidden, activity, to another visible activity.

2. Sometimes, a button saying "Block plasmoids" or something like that appears in the upper-left corner of one of my virtual desktops/activities. It's the same button that I would see if I clicked on the cashew, but it belongs to the hidden activity. It is perfectly functional, and when I click on it the "Add plasmoid" button appears, over it (yes, one button over another).

Please, give it a test.
Comment 16 Andreas Scherf 2009-08-28 18:21:25 UTC
Hello, i have the same problem here. (Kubuntu 9.04) 4.3 final.
But my biggest problem is to understand why activity and desktop are not the same. At first i thought activity == desktop (i have four dektops and want to have 4 different settings on them ... nothing more. I did not really understand the cause of activities ...
Comment 17 RGBl 2009-08-31 09:43:15 UTC
Same problem here with openSUSE 11.1 (64 bits) with 4.3 from factory. 
Since the first day I installed 4.3, I configured it to use different activities on different desktops (I have 4), and it worked perfectly. But some days ago I logged in to discover that my first desktop had a different activity, that there was a new activity I did not create, that the other two desktops had two old activities but on different order and that my main activity was lost. Doing a zoom out, I discovered that I had 5 activities (for 4 desktops...) and that I was not able to delete the new one nor change which one went with which desktop, so it was impossible to reach my main activity. Then I disabled "one activity per desktop", deleted the new activity and set the one activity per desktop again... and again the fifth activity was created moving the first one to the limbo.
There was no kde updates to my system at the time, only a kernel update.
Weird detail: now the activities on the "activities bar" are shown on different order respect to the real distribution when a zoom out is performed...
Ah! The day after this episode I edited one of the activities and instead of changing it, I obtained TWO copies of the original activity changed... and the original was still there, unchanged.
Comment 18 John Andersen 2009-09-02 10:06:13 UTC
Still present in 4.3.1.



We need explicit ways to LOCK activities to a desktop. 
We need explicit ways to delete activities which are not locked.

I believe the rogue 5th activity represents the one that would be
used if the "different activities for each desktop" were unchecked, or it
is hanging around from before it was checked.
Comment 19 Brad Clouthier 2009-09-03 04:48:17 UTC
I am experiencing this bug as well on Arch Linux 64 bit using KDE 4.3.1 (was also present on 4.3.0). I tried deleting any plasma configs and starting again, but the additional activity still appears when enabling the option to have different activities per desktop.
Comment 20 FiNeX 2009-09-13 17:08:44 UTC
I'm still experiencing this bug using current trunk and a clean user account.
Comment 21 Richard Van Den Boom 2009-09-15 08:04:05 UTC
Not only do I have the same issue, but now I'm begining to have problems when sometimes, after booting my system, the plasma config has been completly borked and two activities I had set up are being replaced by default activities with the default background. And I cannot go back to the activity I have set up, when I try and click on it, it still displays the new ones. In that case, I end up with 2 additional activities, and two of mine that are displayed when zooming out but none can really be selected.
At this time, the only thing I can do is to get out of KDE, then replace plasma-desktop-appletsrc and plasma-desktoprc by copies I've made of them.
I'm going to attach the borked copies of the file to this ticket, in case it helps.
Comment 22 Richard Van Den Boom 2009-09-15 08:06:21 UTC
Created attachment 36961 [details]
Borked plasma-desktop-appletsrc file
Comment 23 Richard Van Den Boom 2009-09-15 08:06:54 UTC
Created attachment 36962 [details]
Borked plasma-desktoprc
Comment 24 Giogo 2009-09-23 10:25:42 UTC
I have the same problem too.. And when I use the cube with transparency someone can discern that one desktop falls onto an other randomly for me. If I choose to have every desktop as a separate activity its impossible to delete. If not sometimes it works. I believe that when I zoom out the screen it creates a virtual 5th screen as a new activity and that' s the source of the problem. I am probably wrong but why not give a shot! Hope we don't deal with it in the next update
Comment 25 Florent C. 2009-10-10 19:02:02 UTC
Still here in KDE 4.3.2 (Kubuntu 9.10 Beta)… :/
Comment 26 Miha Čančula 2009-10-24 00:12:49 UTC
I've tested this bug further (and even looked through the code), and here are some more details. This is KDE 4.3.2 on Arch x64.


1. When I increase the number of desktops in SystemSettings, new activities are created instantly.
2. When I decrease the number of desktops, nothing changes. Even after disabling and re-enabling perDesktopViews, if I have more activities than desktops, nothing happens.

I tried another thing: create several activities with perDesktopViews disabled, delete the first activity, then enable perDesktopViews. It created the correct number of activities, however it created an extra one upon restart.

Now I'm not into plasma development, but I suspect PlasmaApp::PlasmaApp::checkVirtualDesktopViews() and DesktopCorona::checkScreens() arent doing what they're supposed to. When perDesktopViews is disabled, the first activity gets desktop set to -1, KWin counts desktops from 1 to N, and checkVirtualDesktopViews() only deletes what KWin reports minus one, so from 0 to N-1. The (-1) activity gets through. 

Note that I didn't have time to compile trunk with that change to test it, so I may be very wrong.
Comment 27 Florent C. 2009-12-03 19:34:49 UTC
Still here. Is it planned to be fixed soon/one day ?
Comment 28 Beat Wolf 2009-12-21 11:56:05 UTC
this should be fixed for kde sc 4.4 rc1 (current trunk). please report back if anybody can test. thank you
Comment 29 Florent C. 2009-12-21 12:48:16 UTC
Great ! Too late for Beta 2 ?
Comment 30 Beat Wolf 2009-12-21 12:55:31 UTC
yeah, beta 2 was tagged on 16th, this fix was made 2 days ago i think. i say i think because it wasn't me so i'm not 100% sure it fixed that bug, thats why i marked it as needsinfo.
Comment 31 FiNeX 2010-01-03 13:06:53 UTC
I've just tried with the OpenSuse "trunk" packages 
  4.3.86 (KDE 4.3.86 (KDE 4.4 >= 20091231)) "release 1"
and a new clean user.

The bug is still reproducible. I'm using a dual monitor setup with nvidia twinview.

I've created a new user and, after loggin in (and restarting kwin due to another known bug), I've set up six virtual desktop and I've checked the "different activity for each desktop".

Zooming out the ZUI I've discovered two additional activities (one for each screen).

2 monitors = 2 screens
6 virtual desktop = 12 screens
-> 14 activities, but only 12 match with a virtual desktop screen.
Comment 32 Florent C. 2010-01-09 22:33:28 UTC
(In reply to comment #30)
> yeah, beta 2 was tagged on 16th, this fix was made 2 days ago i think. i say i
> think because it wasn't me so i'm not 100% sure it fixed that bug, thats why i
> marked it as needsinfo.

Unfortunatly, the bug is not fixed (Kubuntu packages). Same problems.
Comment 33 m00nraker 2010-01-10 18:36:32 UTC
Same problems here with KDE SC 4.4 RC1 (KDE 4.3.90 Release 210) (packages from openSUSE BuildService for 11.2).

Enabling different activities on each virtual desktop creates additional unwanted activities. Each time I log into my KDE Desktop, the created activities are assigned randomly to the individual virtual desktops.
That makes working with activities impossible. The Plasma desktop sometimes even forgets the position and size of some plasmoids, when activities for each desktop are enabled.

When I click on zoom in (cashew icon), the desktop gets minimized and freezes after that. I cannot zoom out back to my previous desktop. I have to kill X11 and login again.

I hope, the "different activities on each desktop" bug will be fixed very very very soon (hope for KDE SC 4.4 final). This bug still exits, since activities are available in KDE.

Thanks for your great work, KDE team. I love your passion for KDE.
Comment 34 Vedran Furač 2010-01-28 00:29:31 UTC
I reported a similar issue:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=221473

but with even more bugs in it so after playing a bit my desktop now looks like this:

http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/3941/snapshot1l.png
Comment 35 Aaron J. Seigo 2010-02-09 22:46:02 UTC
@m00nraker: please check with 4.4.0; many of the fixes for PVDA didn't make it until RC3 or later.
Comment 36 Florent C. 2010-02-10 23:41:58 UTC
The bug seems to be fixed in KDE SC 4.4. I'll confirm after some settings/reboots.
Comment 37 Florent C. 2010-02-10 23:46:46 UTC
Ooops, forget, this is not fixed. It does not creates an additional activity but it's still a big mess after desktop switching etc.
Too bad.
Comment 38 Javier G. 2010-02-11 00:27:45 UTC
I have installed the new 4.4.0 and I still get bugs.

I still have the same setup (2 desktops and an unique activity in my system) and I enable the "different activity for each desktop" from the pager menu and automally it creates 2 new default activities. Is logical to create a second activity because only I had one and there are 2 desktops but 3 activities...

Then, I tested disabling again the "different activity for each desktop" and removed one of the 3 and I tried again activating the option: automatically was created a 3º activity AND automaticaly it switched the current desktop by the new one.

After that attempt, I tried to zoom out to choose the right activity for the current desktop but one of the desktops when I zoom in it gets (as desktop) a mix of the 3 edges of the the activities (very strange effect) so I went of the safe desktop and I disabled "different activity for each desktop" to return to the normality.

:-(
Comment 39 Aaron J. Seigo 2010-02-11 01:02:48 UTC
> creates 2 new default activities

yes, that hasn't changed; it likely will in 4.5, but is still the behaviour in 4.4. it's not exactly a big deal, however: you get an extra containment. supporting switching the setting on and off back and forth as elegantly as possible was secondary to getting the actual bugs worked out such as the issue m00raker was running into.
Comment 40 Martin Samek 2010-03-11 10:33:41 UTC
I can confirm that this bug remains in KDE SC 4.4.1 (Gentoo). New activity appears on each login. And desktop is desperately slow with option Different activities on each desktop enabled.
Comment 41 Aaron J. Seigo 2010-05-08 02:18:18 UTC
*** Bug 232172 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 42 disabled account 2010-06-08 04:54:02 UTC
KDE SC 4.5 Beta 1 is still completely messed up in this regard, I like the new acitivity manager a lot (mainly because it just works) but having different activities on different virtual desktop still is a pain and unusable for me...
Comment 43 m00nraker 2010-06-08 17:41:28 UTC
All the activity stuff is still very unstable, buggy and not ready for productivity. This is my experience with it. So I totally agree with Jakob and can confirm this behavior.
Example:
Starting with a clean KDE 4.5 (Beta 1) setup, I enabled the option "Different widgets for each desktop" in KDE system settings for virtual desktops. I tested with 4 virtual desktops and 1 (the default) activity. Adding different plasmoids to each of the 4 virtual desktops works at the first view. Using the new activity manager (Chani made it possible) I can switch easily between the virtual desktops, can assign different wallpapers and so on. Everything is fine. But then I added 2 additional activities (totally 3 activities now, still with enabled option "different widgets for each desktop"). Based on this configuration I added further plasmoids to each virtual desktop for each of the 2 new activities. When I start playing around with this activity based setup, the trouble beginns and the plasma-desktop crashes. It all ends in a kdeinit4 segmentation fault Signal 11. After that my hole desktop is gone and I get a black screen (plasma dead). Restarting KDE is useless, plasma-desktop still crashes and I again get a black screen. Only removig some plasma and activity config files brings my desktop back to daylight. It all comes only from playing around with the activity stuff. This means adding, removing and switching between different activities, adding/removing plasmoids to/from virtual desktops, even the cloning of the current activity with the activity manager sometimes ends in a plasma-crash. When I don't use activities everything works fine.

I like this activity concept so much and would like to see it working, but the activity stuff is still unusable and that since the beginning. It seems that the new activity manager doesn't change anything on that. Maybe Aaron or even better Chani Armitage can tell something about it. I don't know it exactly, but I think she is the right person to fix the problems.
Comment 44 FiNeX 2010-06-08 19:04:01 UTC
@m00nraker: does it crash even if you set up "different activities for each desktop" ? If it doesn't crash, when you logout and after you log in again, is the previous configuration remembered?
Comment 45 Aaron J. Seigo 2010-06-08 19:43:53 UTC
"When I start playing around with this activity based setup,
the trouble beginns and the plasma-desktop crashes."

backtraces required.

"It seems that the new activity manager doesn't change anything on that."

it actually regressed in 4.5beta1 over 4.4. i spent a bunch of time making it work reasonably in 4.4 (though still some edge cases here and there), and the new activities thing changed a lot of how that code worked. beta2 has a number of fixes, though we haven't done enough testing with PVD (per-virtual-desktop) and the new manager. that will come as we continue to stabilize.

i appreciate your patience, and i hope you appreciate that PVD is a feature that -none- of the developers use or have any interest in using. PVD is a feature 100% developed and maintained for others (e.g. you). it would be really nice if there was someone who used PVD who would maintain that feature alongside us as that would give us the manpower to address these issues comprehensively; until that happens PVD will likely continue to have issues until the whole activities thing is finished up and the usual "spare time for stabilization" filters through.
Comment 46 Thomas Tanghus 2010-06-09 04:00:20 UTC
Just out of curiosity: how do you use the activities? back in 4.x.x something I tried the Activities Switcher or whatever it was called which didn't work at all for me. The PVD way seems much more functional and kinda works for me (on 4.4.4). I also think that it it would be the most intuitive way for newcomers to KDE. I've been using KDE since 0.<something> and having both Virtual desktops AND Activities is confusing. I know Virtual Desktops is something that have been in Linux/Unix for years but it adds to the complexity when adding yet another layer.
In my POV it would be The Right Way to have either Activities OR Virtual Desktops or merge them in a way that would be intuitive to use.
Quite possibly I just haven't grasped the concept yet - or it might just be too complex.
Comment 47 disabled account 2010-06-09 05:50:55 UTC
(In reply to comment #46)
> Just out of curiosity: how do you use the activities? back in 4.x.x something I
> tried the Activities Switcher or whatever it was called which didn't work at
> all for me. The PVD way seems much more functional and kinda works for me (on
> 4.4.4). I also think that it it would be the most intuitive way for newcomers
> to KDE. I've been using KDE since 0.<something> and having both Virtual
> desktops AND Activities is confusing. I know Virtual Desktops is something that
> have been in Linux/Unix for years but it adds to the complexity when adding yet
> another layer.
> In my POV it would be The Right Way to have either Activities OR Virtual
> Desktops or merge them in a way that would be intuitive to use.
> Quite possibly I just haven't grasped the concept yet - or it might just be too
> complex.

That is exactly what I was gonna say, activities like I understand them is really a more advanced kind virtual desktops, most people use virtual desktop for doing different kind of things, for example work stuff on desktop #1 and fun stuff on desktop #2.
Activities take this approach and get it to the next level, not only can certain windows be placed to a certain activity, but activities can also dinamically be added, stopped, changed and deleted.
Being like that I believe the traditional "virtual desktops" should be removed from KDE, this would propably even be not to much of a change technically, instead of the different *static* set of desktops, *dynamic* activities are used, this means that instead of my (say) 2 desktops in my little pager plasmoid, I am displayed my currently running activities, when I use effects like the desktop cube, my currently running activities are shown, were now virtual desktops are shown.
In my opinion this would remove a lot clutter and would sharpen the use case of activities, having virtual desktops and acitivities seems indeed confusing.

Aaron, is this the way KDE is heading with activities?
Comment 48 John Andersen 2010-06-09 06:13:09 UTC
(In reply to comment #47)
 
> Being like that I believe the traditional "virtual desktops" should be removed
> from KDE, 

...
> In my opinion this would remove a lot clutter and would sharpen the use case of
> activities, having virtual desktops and acitivities seems indeed confusing.

Wait: remove virtual desktops to "sharpen" the case for activities???

You realize when you suppress something else (something that has worked well for 20 years) in order to push your new stuff (which doesn't work that well at all) you are automatically on the WRONG track don't you?

There are a large number of user that just want Virtual Desktops, independently configurable as they were in the past.  We would gladly BANISH Activities from KDE all together as a demonstrably failed method, which now, it seems, can only be further propped up by trying to kill off virtual desktops.

Yet we were never give the opportunity to keep working virtual desktops without having the poorly though out, and sloppily implemented activities thrust down our throat. 

Now we are told that the developers of activities never use virtual desktop (it was becoming obvious) and aren't interested fixing the damage they have inflicted upon them.

You guys broke them, you fix them!
Comment 49 Thomas Tanghus 2010-06-09 06:17:51 UTC
I think we're talking about the same goal Jakob. But as far as I understand from the developers are Virtual Desktops managed by KWin and Activities are managed by Plasma Desktop. But from a user it would be much easier to grasp if the two could be merged somehow.
I know that you don't have the man-power for it and I'm too - well lousy a programmer - to do anything about it. So maybe on a longer term it would be possible.
Comment 50 Martin Steigerwald 2010-06-09 09:42:22 UTC
I do not think this is the proper place to vent dissatisfaction with the current or coming plasma activities stuff. This is a bug and enhancement tracker. As that it is to hold concrete descriptions of things that do not work as they should or concrete suggestions on how to improve something.

Especially the bug reported here is about "Enabling "different activities for each desktop" creates an additional activity". Anything that does not relate to this is just off topic here, period.

So please help keep this bugtracker working as its intended and resort to other places to discuss plasma activities. If you really want to improve the situation some plasma developer mailing list would be the right place for *constructive* feedback. I think its fair when it also contains a summary on why the current stuff does not work for you, as long as its detailed and constructive. But ideally it should also contain ideas on how you like it.

As for the coupling of plasma activities and virtual desktops, I see one problem, when they are not merged: Plasma activities just switch plasmoids. At least in KDE 4.3, and I think its the same in KDE 4.4. What I want is to sort  regular applications that use windows and plasmoids for one topic together on one activity. I never grasped why I should just switch the plasmoids. But also for that is off topic, thus creating another bug report:

Bug #241176 - please provide good integration of activities with window based applications, virtual desktops

Please also there do only add constructive feedback related to the topic of the bug report. If you have another issue file another bug report.

Thanks.
Comment 51 Thomas Tanghus 2010-06-09 19:58:02 UTC
You're right Martin. I'll move it to the mailing list and I have voted for your wish. I final note to the devs is that this issue has really improved a lot in the latest iterations and I do appreciate the work you put into it.
Comment 52 Vedran Furač 2010-06-09 22:48:10 UTC
Just to say I completely agree with Thomas Olsen.
Comment 53 Aaron J. Seigo 2010-06-11 01:28:42 UTC
so things are generally working in svn right now; the rest of the topic here belong elsewhere (e.g. the mailing list or irc)