Hi,

With a recent update of KDE I experienced a changed behaviour for opening windows. When I start dolphin or kate from the command prompt an existing window is reused instead of creating a new window.

Problem is that I am using KDE with 6 virtual desktops and 5 different activities. This setup uses 30 different desktops. The purpose is to be able to focus on one thing at a time, one project, one customer, my own company etc. This is one of the most important drivers for taking the effort of continue using Linux instead Microsoft for my professional work. I have invested in 64 GB ram to make full use of the complex desktop it offers, and I love it.

In this setup I will need to open dolphin, kate and some other programs several times and be able to predict where it will be started next time. If I get them mixed up the entire concept of activities and virtual desktops seems wasted.

Sometimes I need to make changes to a complex set of files and open several kate sessions to structure the work. Open in an existing window breaks the work structure to a mess (which is why I am writing this post right now).

Given the unique KDE function with both virtual desktops and activities I think defaulting to open things in tabs instead of new windows is actually not that useful as default setting, it kind of breaks the beauty of it.

Are there any way to change this behaviour? I am not very keen to add "--new-windows" to each and every program I start - I use the command prompt a lot. Neither am I looking forward to make proxy scripts or aliases for all thinkable KDE-software just to deal with something like this.

I would prefer a setting or environment variable instead but can't find any.

I am running 64 bit gentoo and plasma 5.16.5. I also have the same problem on an Artix linux setup I figure is running the same version of plasma.

Thanks,
Erik

Hi Erik,

not sure if it will help you but have you checked Settings > Workspace > Window Management >Task Switcher?.

I have been there to look and found nothing relevant.

It is not the task swtcher in partucular, it is that something have changed. Until last update I got a new window when I started dolphin from the command line:

Code: Select all

$ dolphin . &


Now I get a new tab in an existing window somewhere else in the 30 desktops where I have been recently.

I want it back:

Code: Select all

$ dolphin . &


shall start a new dolphin window in the context I am at the moment. That is how it used to work and it was very supportive to a complex activity and virtual desktop setup.

I can achieve the expected result using:

Code: Select all

$ dolphin --new-window . &


but that is kind of to much to write every time so I need some means to make it the default.

BR
Erik

Hi Erik,

sorry that didn't help you, you might want to take a look at the documentation pages for KDE, you might find something there?:

https://kde.org/documentation/

I work in similar fashion as you, with many Activities that I switch between and expect to have certain sets of things available on each. (I would also benefit from expanding things using multiple virtual desktops as I do run into space problems with my current workflow)

With this workflow, I've never come to rely on anything which does tab or session management for me as I generally expect new windows to open when I click on things which open new documents (even tweaking how Firefox is invoked in System Settings > Applications > Default Applications > Web Browser to explicitly launch new windows instead of activating an existing one by default).

Now, you suggest that the behavior changed after a recent upgrade? You might check the release notes to see if the change was mentioned somewhere (especially for Dolphin), otherwise I'd recommend filing a bug to bugs.kde.org to fix the regression.

An option for resolving the problem with Kate would be to use Kwrite instead. Kwrite is Kate's single-document/plugin-less companion application, so there's no session management or opening-in-the-same-window problems.

If need be, you could edit the application entries for the offending applications by right-clicking on them in the application menu, selecting Edit Application... and under the Application tab editing the Command to provide the option to explicitly start a new window (insofar as they provide such an option).

Looks like Dolphin and Kate were updated in the 19.08 release to open new documents in existing windows by default. The announcement for the change in Dolphin does say "Note that this behavior is now on by default, but it can be disabled.", so there should be an option somewhere in Dolphin's settings to disable it (and hopefully a similar option in Kate as well, maybe).

I can't verify for sure as I haven't upgraded yet.

Thanks airdrik,
I am running 19.08 but I failed to find that particular announcement.

Now that I know where to look I found the option for dolphin (most important for me) but not for kate yet.

Thanks a lot!

Hi,

Is there a solution to this for Kate? And what is it for Dolphin?

I've just started using Activities, after many years with KDE but this really is a big inconvenience.

Thanks.

You can try this global setting to disable a new window appearing as a tab in exiting

System Settings -> Window Behavior -> Window Tabbing -> Uncheck the option "Automatically group similar windows under window tabbing"
But this will apply globally..

It frustrated me for years!

Finally I found the solution in Dolphin (v20.12.2):
Configure Dolphin... --> Startup --> Disable "General: Open new folders in tabs".