Apparently, though unproven, at 18:35 on Tuesday 30 November 2010, Alex Schuster did opine thusly:
> Alan McKinnon writes: > > I "get" KDE (mostly) but some stuff is just bizarre: > > > > Activities. wtf are those? > > I tink they are really cool, although I don't use them, and probably never > will. But I'm not the average user. I have six virtual desktops (current > screenshots are at http://www.wonkology.org/comp/desktop/2010-11-11/ ), > each one has its purpose. For each window you can define the desktop it > will run on. You change the desktop, and you get new windows displayed, > while the plasmoids stay the same. > > With activities it's the other way around. You switch the activity, and the > windows stay the same, but you get different plasmoids. That's a decent explanation, thanks a lot. I can see how some folks would like that and why it's been coded. You assume right, I'm a multiple-desktop-with-a-pager sort of guy. 6 desktops and I know where I like to launch things. I mostly don't have plasmoids on the desktop, mostly because I never see the desktop :-) I usually maximize most windows (kontact, amarok) or split the screen 65/35 between a browser and konsole. To do action X, I launch the app that does that action and most of my work is in a browser and terminal I now do have two plasmoids on the desktop - a clock that shows when the screensaver comes up, and notifications, which displays the popup above all regular windows. I guess I'm just not into all this new shiny glitzy bouncey stuff. If I wanted bling, I'd be using a mac ;-) > > For example, you have your default activity active, with some plasmoids, > whatever they are. Then you want to inspect why the system is suddenly > being slow, so you switch to your admin activity, which has all kinds of > system monitors and loggers you normally prefer to not show up. I think > that's the idea. I would just switch to desktop1 where I have some of > these plasmoids, but that is my approach. Others seem to like these > activities. > > A 3rd activity might show some newstickers and web plasmoids. While I would > just switch to my desktop3, where I have this stuff. > > And a 4th activity could display folder views of various locations. You > don't care about them normally, and use the desktop space for other things > you like more. But when you want access to those folders, they are just one > keystroke away. > > I would be surprised if you'd start using activities, I guess you're more > the multiple desktop guy. But hey, as long as you don't add other > activities, you don't have to care about them. > > I think there are further plans, like applications starting and quitting > automatically when switching activities. So you put your desktop into > different modes, according to the task you are currently doing. I'm doing > all this stuff in parallel, so I just sort it on different desktops. > > There is much development going on currently, this stuff is still evolving. > In 4.5.2, you had to use one activity per virtual desktop if you wanted to > have different plasmoids on different desktops, or different wallpapers. > This has changed, you can have different plasmoids on each desktop now > (although I'm missing the 'sticky' option to have _some_ plasmoids on all > desktops), and also different wallpapers. But who knows how this stuff will > have evolved until KDE 4.7. > > Wonko -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
