[4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

RE: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Wed Mar 25, 2009 7:01 am

Back in the days of 3.5...
I used to have 6 Desktops, each with a different background to identify it. As strange as it may seem those Desktops worked fantastically well to hold my different "Activities". Typically I have 2 or 3 apps on each desktop, and (amazingly!) I could switch at an instant with a mouse click or a hotkey.

Sadly those happy days are gone it seems.

I agree entirely with these sentiments. I trust that plasma is a great thing, but what I want is what londoh describes. I really find different wallpapers for different "desktops" useful for knowing where I am.

The current state of my understanding is that Activites exist in order to group widgets. But I work with programs -- Firefox, Kompozer, Gimp and so on -- not with widgets!

RE: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Wed Mar 25, 2009 11:41 am

Back in the days of 3.5...
I used to have 6 Desktops, each with a different background to identify it. As strange as it may seem those Desktops worked fantastically well to hold my different "Activities". Typically I have 2 or 3 apps on each desktop, and (amazingly!) I could switch at an instant with a mouse click or a hotkey.

Sadly those happy days are gone it seems.

I agree entirely with these sentiments. I trust that plasma is a great thing, but what I want is what londoh describes. I really find different wallpapers for different "desktops" useful for knowing where I am.

The current state of my understanding is that Activites exist in order to group widgets. But I work with programs -- Firefox, Kompozer, Gimp and so on -- not with widgets!

actually , been using it with 4.2.67 for a week , and no problems here.

never have activities disappeared or appeared , nor nothing.

and switching is also very fast. only problem is kwin effects on grid and present windows that are slower now.

and i actually have 9 activities / virtual desktops.

as you can see here : http://yagami.deviantart.com/art/wonder ... -116540302

RE: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Wed Mar 25, 2009 4:36 pm

actually , been using it with 4.2.67 for a week , and no problems here.

never have activities disappeared or appeared , nor nothing.

and switching is also very fast. only problem is kwin effects on grid and present windows that are slower now.

and i actually have 9 activities / virtual desktops.

as you can see here : http://yagami.deviantart.com/art/wonder ... -116540302

Hi yagami/Joneall

Joneall - commiserations!

yagami - I'm glad to hear you can make it work for you.
I looked at your screenshot but its difficult to see whats happening.

My needs are probably quite simple. I just want to get a different background on a number of desktops and group my applications within those desktop/activities
Can you help me by explaining howto do this?

RE: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Wed Mar 25, 2009 4:46 pm

Joneall - commiserations!

Thank you. Maybe I will do better with a more advanced version of KDE. I'm using what is available under Kubuntu 9.04 (2.6.28-11).

How do I find out the version of KDE i am running? If I look at "About KDE" in the help tab of an application, I see KDE4.2.1. Is that correct?

Thanks.

[neverendingo]

RE: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Thu Mar 26, 2009 12:09 am

@joneall:

Yes, that is exactly what you need to look at when you are running KDE.

RE: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Thu Mar 26, 2009 4:46 pm

actually , been using it with 4.2.67 for a week , and no problems here.

never have activities disappeared or appeared , nor nothing.

and switching is also very fast. only problem is kwin effects on grid and present windows that are slower now.

and i actually have 9 activities / virtual desktops.

as you can see here : http://yagami.deviantart.com/art/wonder ... -116540302

Hi yagami/Joneall

Joneall - commiserations!

yagami - I'm glad to hear you can make it work for you.
I looked at your screenshot but its difficult to see whats happening.

My needs are probably quite simple. I just want to get a different background on a number of desktops and group my applications within those desktop/activities
Can you help me by explaining howto do this?

about the screenshot , if you click download , you will get the full sized image. maybe that helps.

remember this is in 4.2.67 , not 4.2.1

what i did was , before starting i set up the same number of activities and virtual desktops

then i zoomed out and after a while ( plasma zoom out is very very slow ) a window appeared that had a checkbox for linking plasma actitvities with virtual desktops.

i clicked on it. at first , it lost all the names of my activities. but that was it. i then renamed all activities again ,and has been stable so far.

tip , if you want to change the order of the activities , or specify which one on a specific virtual desktop , just zoom out on the virtual desktop , and zoom in on the activity you want.

good luck

RE: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:56 am

I've tried this experimental feature on Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE 4.2, because I would really like to see it working. However, I have two displays, and according to the plasma website every display screen must have its own activity. Contrarily, my virtual desktops span both displays. You may have to link activities somehow to get this working. I got a lot of activities spawning, and some strange combinations where my larger screen would show an activity of the smaller one and so on... But two thumbs up, once this works, it would be great!

[anda_skoa]

RE: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Tue Apr 21, 2009 2:51 pm

Now, edit the file $KDEHOME/share/config/plasmarc ($KDEHOME is .kde on Kubuntu 8.10+, .kde4 on openSUSE. I don't know about other distros). Inside, locate the [General] section. There, write

Code: Select all

perVirtualDesktopViews=true

Or, use this command on a shell

Code: Select all

% kwriteconfig --file plasmarc --group General --key perVirtualDesktopView --type bool true


And let KDE figure out where to find the file and where to put the setting

Cheers,
_

Re: RE: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Thu Mar 24, 2011 5:58 pm

Code: Select all

% kwriteconfig --file plasmarc --group General --key perVirtualDesktopView --type bool true

And let KDE figure out where to find the file and where to put the setting

I have two questions:

• Why is this information not more readily available (prominently displayed)?
• Should it be this difficult to do? I mean, shouldn't "Desktop Settings" just allow you to specify that this wall paper is for all desktops and if you want per-desktop wallpaper, then click here and you'll get perVirtualDesktopView set to "true"? It used to work this way, and I do not see why it should be made so much harder to do now.

[Hans]

Re: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Thu Mar 24, 2011 6:13 pm

Not sure what you mean, but the setting can now be found in System Settings -> Workspace Appearance and Behavior -> Workspace Behavior -> (Virtual Desktops ->) Different widgets for each desktop.

Re: [4.2]Linking activities to virtual desktops

Tue Nov 15, 2011 5:41 pm

Should it be this difficult to do? I mean, shouldn't "Desktop Settings" just allow you to specify that this wall paper is for all desktops and if you want per-desktop wallpaper, then click here and you'll get perVirtualDesktopView set to "true"? It used to work this way, and I do not see why it should be made so much harder to do now.

Not sure what you mean, but the setting can now be found in System Settings -> Workspace Appearance and Behavior -> Workspace Behavior -> (Virtual Desktops ->) Different widgets for each desktop.

QED. (Thus shown, it is proven.) What I mean is that if you go into where you can set a desk top wall paper, it really shouldn't be too hard to leave a little bread crumb about where to find other relevant settings. If KDE were simple, one could just do an exhaustive search. But KDE is horribly complicated. That means that stuff that seems logically related may not be configured in the same place. If they are not configured in the same place, there should be some place where one can go to find all the other places where one needs to go. Instead, the one place where I go is Google and it isn't 100% on finding the references I need.