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Alan McKinnon writes: |
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> I "get" KDE (mostly) but some stuff is just bizarre: |
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> |
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> Activities. wtf are those? |
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I tink they are really cool, although I don't use them, and probably never |
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will. But I'm not the average user. I have six virtual desktops (current |
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screenshots are at http://www.wonkology.org/comp/desktop/2010-11-11/ ), each |
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one has its purpose. For each window you can define the desktop it will run |
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on. You change the desktop, and you get new windows displayed, while the |
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plasmoids stay the same. |
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With activities it's the other way around. You switch the activity, and the |
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windows stay the same, but you get different plasmoids. |
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For example, you have your default activity active, with some plasmoids, |
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whatever they are. Then you want to inspect why the system is suddenly being |
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slow, so you switch to your admin activity, which has all kinds of system |
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monitors and loggers you normally prefer to not show up. I think that's the |
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idea. I would just switch to desktop1 where I have some of these plasmoids, |
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but that is my approach. Others seem to like these activities. |
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A 3rd activity might show some newstickers and web plasmoids. While I would |
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just switch to my desktop3, where I have this stuff. |
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And a 4th activity could display folder views of various locations. You |
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don't care about them normally, and use the desktop space for other things |
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you like more. But when you want access to those folders, they are just one |
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keystroke away. |
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I would be surprised if you'd start using activities, I guess you're more |
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the multiple desktop guy. But hey, as long as you don't add other |
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activities, you don't have to care about them. |
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I think there are further plans, like applications starting and quitting |
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automatically when switching activities. So you put your desktop into |
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different modes, according to the task you are currently doing. I'm doing |
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all this stuff in parallel, so I just sort it on different desktops. |
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There is much development going on currently, this stuff is still evolving. |
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In 4.5.2, you had to use one activity per virtual desktop if you wanted to |
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have different plasmoids on different desktops, or different wallpapers. |
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This has changed, you can have different plasmoids on each desktop now |
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(although I'm missing the 'sticky' option to have _some_ plasmoids on all |
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desktops), and also different wallpapers. But who knows how this stuff will |
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have evolved until KDE 4.7. |
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|
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Wonko |