I'm running Kubuntu 12.10 on my laptop. When it is at work it is in a docking station with two external monitors. When on the road or at home, I only have the built in screen.

Now thanks to viewtopic.php?f=14&t=88659 I at least can make sure KDE uses the right monitors for the sistuation. However when I'm using the dual external monitors I want a 2nd panel on the 2nd monitor and when I'm just using the built in I only want one panel.

I think this is exactly the kind of thing Activities were devleoped for. So I cloned the Desktop activity, named it DUAL, and added a 2nd panel to it. Unfortunatly, when I swtich back to the Desktop activity the 2nd panel remains. If I delete the 2nd panel in Desktop, it is also deleted from DUAL.

What am I doing wrong? Should I even be using Activities?

Also once I get this fixed, how to I tell KDE when to use the correct activity based on which monitor(s) are being used?

Thanks in advance.

Panels are shared between activities. Nothing wrong here.

So how then can I accomplish what I'm trying to do?

Can you please elaborate on what happens to the second panel? Is it forced on to your primary screen somehow?
To the best of my knowledge, second panels attached to other screens were simply inaccessible when no screen was attached there.

Yes when I was using only the laptop's screen, the 2nd panel was getting put on top of the main panel.

I've "solved" this entire problem by a pretty horrible hack.

I first had to boot to single user mode (that was a nightmare to figure out).
Copied the ~/.kde/share directory to two places, ~/.kde/share-HDMI3 and ~/.kde/share-LVDS1
I then removed the ~/.kde/share directory
Next I created a symlink
ln -nfs /home/jist/.kde/share-HDMI3 /home/jist/.kde/share
Then I modified the script I mentioned in my first post to change the symlink based on which monitors are connected. it seems to work, however I don't think this is really the best way to do it.

That has essentially created two sets of KDE configuration.
Which version of KDE is in use here?

bcooksley wrote:That has essentially created two sets of KDE configuration.
Which version of KDE is in use here?

I'm on a fresh install of Kubuntu 12.10.

$> kde4-config --version
Qt: 4.8.3
KDE Development Platform: 4.9.5
kde4-config: 1.0

I suspect this is a bug, can you please file a report at bugs.kde.org?
Note that if you can it may be worthwhile to upgrade to KDE 4.10 first, as this may possibly be solved there.