In KDE4, it was possible to attach a specific activity to each virtual desktop. This allowed a very fluid way to move around your activities, particularly when using the Desktop Grid effect. With Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5.3, users are told that this is not possible anymore and that activities alone are to be used instead. The problem is that, for many users, the current state of activities does not allow them to get the same workflow they had in KDE4, and the one that is offered is quite less satisfying : - Moving around in Activities requires either the plasmoid listing the activities, or using keystrokes. It's more awkward than just configuring the Grid desktop effect to be enabled when going to a specific corner of the screen. - Moving a window from an activity to another is a more complicated, requiring to right click on the top bar, selecting the new activity and removing the current one. Compared to using Desktop Grid, and moving a window from one desktop to the other, this is a lot less fluid. - Some windows tend to appear in the Activity in which they were last started or closed (Konqueror, Kontact), even if you start the application in another activity. This may a bug specific to these applications, though, as Konsole, for instance, does not show this behaviour. But that's quite annoying. On the whole, the current state of Activities feels a lot more static than in KDE4. It would be nice if some effects like the Desktop Effects that were used to switch between virtual desktops could be added to activites. I'm pretty sure it would fix most of the complains users have about them right now.
Hi Richard, First of all, thanks for the detailed report. I'd say it is filed under a wrong product - parts of it are about Plasma and parts about KWin, but I'm not surprised that all issues related to activities tend to end up in the activities library. > attach a specific activity to each virtual desktop. It was not. You were able to have different widgets on different virtual desktops. You weren't able to have VDs tied to activities (though, in first versions of plasma, the widget sets were called activities for some reason). This feature is not going to be available in the default plasma shell - if someone writes a custom one, it can do whatever it wants. > Grid desktop effect to be enabled when going to a specific corner of the screen. It could probably be possible to have the activity switcher shown when the user moves the cursor to a corner. > Moving a window from an activity to another is a more complicated This is in the works. I haven't had the time to make a release yet unfortunately. I hope it will go into the next release of plasma, or the one after that. You can see what it will look like at http://cukic.co/2014/07/15/a-screencast-of-the-activity-switcher-in-plasma-5-1 > Some windows tend to appear in the Activity in which they were If you are referring to opening an already existing window that was minimized to systray (like for kontact) - it is supposed to stay on the same activity it was. If this happens when you actually start an application that was not running before, then something strange happens which should be investigated in a separate bug report.
Thanks a lot for the quick feedback. I apologize if it was not the right category to post this, it's a bit difficult to identify the proper one to, so I went for the category that spelled explicitely "activities". > It was not. You were able to have different widgets on different virtual desktops. You weren't > able to have VDs tied to activities (though, in first versions of plasma, the widget sets were > called activities for some reason). Fine for me. This goes to show that users do not really care if the feature is called "virtual desktops", "activities" or "widgets". All they want basically is to have the possibility to have several desktops with different widgets and move around them quickly and efficiently. > It could probably be possible to have the activity switcher shown when the user moves the > cursor to a corner. Well, I'm pretty sure that if Activity switchers that mimick the virtual desktops switchers are implemented, most people will be happy. And if they could be triggered using corner positions, as virtual desktop switchers, that would be great. >This is in the works. I haven't had the time to make a release yet unfortunately. I hope it will >go into the next release of plasma, or the one after that. You can see what it will look like at >http://cukic.co/2014/07/15/a-screencast-of-the-activity-switcher-in-plasma-5-1 Yep, this looks rather good. I would need to use it to see if it's as easy as with Desktop Grid, but it looks definitely a lot easier than the current state. > If you are referring to opening an already existing window that was minimized to systray (like > for kontact) - it is supposed to stay on the same activity it was. I guess this is the logic with which activities were created, but I don't believe this fits with the way people work. I, for instance, usually define 4 activities : - Work : widgets for my regular work - Personal : widgets for my personal things to handle - Leasure : widgets for music, videos, etc. - System : widgets to manage my computer I do want to access Kontact from both Work and Personal. So it complicates things for me if after being minimized, Kontact opens in a different activity than the one I'm currently in. It's unnecessarily rigid, IMHO. >If this happens when you actually start an application that was not running before, then something strange happens which should be investigated in a separate bug report. OK, I'll open a bug for Konqueror and Kontact then, that's the two I had this experience with. One more annoying thing compared to KDE4 : it was doing a rather good job in restoring the windows in the proper virtual desktop / widgets collection (since it was not activities ;-)) after a shutdown/restart. Currently, after restart, all windows are reopened in the initial activity where the system decided to start (I guess it is the one I was in at shutdown).
> I apologize if it was not the right category to post this No problem. Nicely written, detailed reports beat categorization any time. :) > All they want basically is to have the possibility to have several desktops with different widgets This is not going to happen. It was decided by Plasma team a few times now (every once in a while we consider adding this back because users ask for different wallpapers, and different widgets on different desktops from time to time) > Well, I'm pretty sure that if Activity switchers that mimick the virtual desktops > switchers are implemented Somebody is working on a pager-like applet for activity switching. Can not remember where I saw that - here or on the forums. As for the desktop grid effect, I don't think anyone is working on that. > I do want to access Kontact from both Work and Personal. If you want Kontact in both activities, just put it in both activities. Unfortunately, windowing rules allow you to force an application to a specific (one) activity, or to be on all of them (I keep Kontact and friends on all activities). We don't have that for choosing multiple activities. > it was doing a rather good job in restoring the windows in the proper virtual > desktop / widgets collection Session stuff is utterly broken on Qt5/Plasma5, people are working on it. I hope it will be fixed soon. > OK, I'll open a bug for Konqueror and Kontact then, that's the two I had this experience with. I don't really think there is a problem in Kontact and Konqueror - I don't think they do anything related to activities inside. I think they all rely on KWin's default behaviour of assigning activities to windows. Essentially, the logic is as follows: When a new window is created: - is it a Plasma Shell / * window - it is on all activities - check whether there is a user-defined rule of whether the window should be on specific activity, if there is, put it there - if no rules are present, and the window is not special, it goes to the current activity When an old window is activated: - KWin switches the current activity to any of the activities that window belongs to.
> This is not going to happen. It was decided by Plasma team a few times now (every once in a > while we consider adding this back because users ask for different wallpapers, and different > widgets on different desktops from time to time) Mmm, my choice of words was awkward : let's talk about workspaces, whether they are technically activities or virtual desktops. I don't think people are concerned what **technical** solutions is chosen, all they want is to be able to have several different workspaces with different widgets and be able to move around easily between them. In KDE4, from a user perspective, it was almost perfect. In Frameworks / Plasma 5, Activities are supposed to fill the bill but actually show multiple regressions from a user perspective, basically the ones I tried to highlight in my previous messages. To round up : - Moving around between activities is awkward -> a pager-like applet is being worked on, no activity grid or activity "cube switcher" though. - Moving around windows between activities is awkward -> an improved activity switcher is being worked on, not easy as the grid, but definitively a move in the right direction. - Apps minimized in the tray are reopened in the systray in which the window was started -> This is by design. Seems too rigid to me. IMHO, it should be reopened in the current activity. - Some apps are started in the activity they were last started -> The provided logic for activity assignation seems OK, but not always enforced. Maybe open a bug to kwin. - Apps are all reopened in the current activity after restart/reboot -> Known bug, wait for a fix in future version of Plasma. So on the whole, I guess my wishes would be : - an "Activity Grid" that behaves for Activities how Desktop Grid worked for virtual desktop - Change the behaviour of applications that were minimized in the Systray to reopen in the current Activity
> Apps minimized in the tray are reopened in the systray in which the window was started Should reread myself... Make it : "Apps minimized in the systray are reopened in the activity in which the window was started"
it's similar to 349486 in contents (btw in Plasma 5.5 there is a pager that uses activities that may be useful there) *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 349486 ***