If you have KDE 4.2 (trunk, or the betas) you may be interested in the fact that you can actually link a specific activity to a virtual desktop. This has been in the works and was also on the Feature Plan.

Notice: This feature is experimental and has no GUI option for it. It involves editing configuration files, so you may want to make backups before screwing your Plasma configuration.

That said, ensure that Plasma is not running: if you are in KDE, this can be accomplished by opening a terminal and writing

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kquitapp plasma

That will shut Plasma down nicely, and of course your desktop will disappear (but the terminal will still be open)

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

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perVirtualDesktopViews=true

Save the file and restart Plasma.

OK it kind of works for me...
I have activity per desktop, but I also have more than just 4 activities, I actually have 13! activities.
One that I have before the whole massing with plasmarc and I guess the first 4 activities started when I started plasma again
But unfortunately I "bound" it with the console (forgot the & at the end) and when I quited Konsole the whole palasma died so I started it again.
And 4 more activities appeared. Then I decided to remove the added activities.
But while I was trying that my KWin died. So i had to restart the X and the last 4 activities appeared.
Is this because I added [general] myself there wasn't any before I added it.
I use Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE4.2beta2 (what else?)

Well I think it is a great idea , but it doesn't work! After changing plasmarc only first virtual desktop has wallpaper, the other ones are completly black and right click doesn't do anything.

@tleskac
Well, that is the point of the /experimental/ attribute

Try going to the main virtual desktop, and create activities from there. (I haven't tested this, just guessing what could be the issue)

tleskac wrote:Well I think it is a great idea , but it doesn't work! After changing plasmarc only first virtual desktop has wallpaper, the other ones are completly black and right click doesn't do anything.

I get the same thing. But If you zoom out you'll see that there are other activities, but
if you try to zoom in on one of them you'll be thrown back to your main activity.
And If you log off and back in you'll see that there are more activities than they were before. They are spawning with every logout (or maybe with zoom out...).
Anyway this is one of my most wanted features, but unfortunately is not there yet.

Also did you have a General section in your plasmarc or did you had to add it, as I did?

Usually you have to add it. And as others have said, the feature is quite experimental at the moment (though I assume the developers will work on it for 4.3).

Same problem here - when I add the "perVirtualDesktopViews=true" to the plasmarc file my first desktop works Ok, but the second doesn't display anything except the panel and a black background. The right click menu is missing too.
I tried removing all my activities, adding new ones and restarting but nothing seems to change.

Work perfect on OpenSuse 11.1 with KDE 4.2.62

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kquitapp plasma-desktop

edit $KDEHOME/share/config/plasmarc and add:

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[Global]
perVirtualDesktopViews=true

Then

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plasma-desktop

You have not use compiz as window manager. Enable desktop effects in KDE Control panel.

Nice to hear, but strangely it dosen't work in Kubuntu nor in KDE-neon.

I sometimes feel like using the wrong distro for the best KDE experience...

This is possibly because the feature is now being implemented for KDE 4.3 ( I think Neon is KDE Trunk? )
As a result the entries in the configuration file are very likely to change.

I got it to work in KDE-neon for a while, but then the whole desktop became slow and buggy and crashed. After I log back in there was no plasma any more.
And if I force start plasma-desktop nothing happens. But if I write plasma my normal KDE4.2 desktop appears.
Even after I removed the

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[Global]
perVirtualDesktopViews=true

in my KDE-neon plasma-desktoprc and plasmarc my KDE-neon desktop dosen't come back...
But it's getting near the implementation as I didn't loose the desktops as before my computer just became really slow (hope that that's not due to my hardware and more due to that this option is experimental...)
I think I can get my KDE-neon desktop back with deleting plasmarc and plasma-desktoprc; will report.

Nope deleting plasmarc, dekstop-plasmarc and kwinrc (and some other kwin realted rc)
dosen't do the trick. I get the desktop for few seconds the everything just disappears.
Just hope everything will be repaired with next neon update...

does this still work on kde 4.2.64 ?

i just tryed it and it didnt work have the developers disable it ?

thanks

yagami wrote:does this still work on kde 4.2.64 ?

i just tryed it and it didnt work have the developers disable it ?

thanks

I just tried it in KDE-neon (KDE4.2.63) and it seems not to work.
Probably because it's in development as it was mentioned in few posts ago...
Hoping it will be here soon (at least in KDE4.3)

since kde 4.2.67, you have an gui to this option.

just zoom out a plasma , and a windows with a checkbox should appear to enable linking activities with virtual desktop