Test setup: use at least 2 activities, with at least 2 virtual desktops. Put separate dolphin on e.g. the first virtual desktop in both activities. Switch to the other virtual desktop. From a terminal or kicker call: dolphin ftp://sources.redhat.com What happens that one dolphin is activated, in almost all cases not the one on the current activity. If it is the one on the current activity in your test, switch to the other activity, switch to the non-dolphin desktop, test again. What happens for me are 2 things: -the activity is switched to the one where the now activated dolphin instance resides, instead of using the one in the current activity, opening the last virtual desktop of that activity -dolphin is moved to the virtual desktop in that activity where the command was issued, i.e. it switches virtual desktops
This can be even worse: sometimes it reactivates a stopped activity to use the dolphin on that activity. "From commandline" is here more a "anything that comes through xdg-open", so it may affect a lot more apps than just custom scripts.
This should be https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=408919 *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 408919 ***