Hi everyone,

This is my first post on KDE.org.

I struggle with Activity-based workflows. I've embraced activities, not necessarily as widget containers, but as application containers. For example, my main activity is simply my desktop icons. I have another activity called Comm, where I place KMail and Choqok next to each other. I have another activity for writing and another for development. I have KMail set to open in the Comm activity whenever it's launched, so that I can keep my workspace isolated from apps that might interrupt me from my regular work. This works, but it creates a bunch of repetitive tasks that I have to do when I boot up and when I shut down.

When I boot up:
1. Click Activities, click the Play button on Comm.
2. Do stuff (check email, etc.).
3. To write, click Activities, click Play button on Writing.
4. To develop, click Activities, click Play button on Development.

When I shut down:
1. Switch to each activity, close apps.
2. Switch to Desktop activity.
3. Click Activities, and click Stop button on all activities except Desktop.
4. Shut down.

I have to do it this way. If I don't, I can't guarantee which activity appears the next time I boot up. The Comm activity might open, or the Writing activity. I want to see my desktop by default when I boot up. They also seem to open in a random order. I use the Activity Bar, so it would be nice if they always appeared in the bar in the same order. Since they don't, and I can't guarantee which activity I'll see when I boot up, I stop all the activities except for the one I want to be the default before I shut down.

I was wondering if there's a way to set one particular activity as the default, and have KDE close all activities except that one when you shut down or log out? Either that, or if you could set one activity as the default that always shows up when you log in? If there's no way to do this (and I haven't been able to find a setting), would this be something that others would be interested in?

Thanks!

--Rich

I don't think it's built in but I'm guessing you could do that with some scripting, although I'm not sure how to use scripts for each login / logoff (by "scripts" I mean JS scripts that can access activities).

sez wrote:I have to do it this way. If I don't, I can't guarantee which activity appears the next time I boot up. The Comm activity might open, or the Writing activity. I want to see my desktop by default when I boot up. They also seem to open in a random order. I use the Activity Bar, so it would be nice if they always appeared in the bar in the same order. Since they don't, and I can't guarantee which activity I'll see when I boot up, I stop all the activities except for the one I want to be the default before I shut down.

I would recommend trying the other activity list plasmoids instead of the Activity Bar to see if any of them fits better.
The Activity Manager plasmoid, in particular, sorts the activities by name (so you could get your default desktop to show up at the top by just naming it to be lexicographically before the others). I like it because it is nice and compact.

sez wrote:I was wondering if there's a way to set one particular activity as the default, and have KDE close all activities except that one when you shut down or log out? Either that, or if you could set one activity as the default that always shows up when you log in? If there's no way to do this (and I haven't been able to find a setting), would this be something that others would be interested in?

Thanks!

--Rich

I know of no way to set one activity as The Default activity. It is usually whichever one you were on last (and may depend on your Desktop Session settings (System Settings -> System Administration -> Startup and Shutdown -> Session Management) - that is if you tell it to always use a specific saved session then I would guess that it should start on the same activity every time). My experience (and I use activities pretty extensively) is that this has been pretty reliable.

On another note, when you stop an activity, it should remember and close any applications associated with it and reopen them when you start it back up again. So at the very least you should be able to simplify your workflow to not worry so much about closing and restarting applications in each activity and just stop the activities before logging out, then start them up when you log in as you start to use them.