Prompted Restore Session

Mon Jul 15 17:03:13 BST 2013

Interesting Duncan. One thing that has struck me about the changes is that in real terms all they are doing is presenting folders and icons in a different way. Hardly surprising really as "windows" is extremely mature and in many ways difficult to really get away from. Now there will be more changes on the same line and virtualisation. I get the impression that the later is led by more than one core in a processor. Also a buzz word at the moment. Not an area I have looked at much as I am more interested in distributed processing and services. Lots of people are although at the moment they wouldn't see it like that - nas's and home servers etc. There is also a lot of interest in low power processors. Much more flexible than more cores. People are even running good home media servers on them alongside a nas.

In a way I am reminded of the HP going back to the shed advert. KDE attracted a lot of some times semi enterprise use because it could be configured relatively easily to suite what people might want or have to present to users. Linux etc is still used on a number of large networks and that is essentially it's roots and has been for some time now. Some distro's are driven by people with the desire to offer enterprise wide solutions that do compete with windoze. I feel that away from the server it's gone a bit "me too". Maybe kde scripting now works a little bit better than it does on 4.6. Maybe it's still relatively easy to use. I'd guess in many cases it's mainly linux server, samba and windoze pc's now. Windoze have just added NFS to make server migration easier. Also probably doing a lot of work deep down in their code to make the glossy end more suitable for rapid change - bottom end too. Fact is that there is lots of free OS available for windoze now
 but fortunately there pricing policy and there updates put people off and make them look elsewhere. That mostly applies to home users not enterprises.

Ok the idea of what are really multiple desktops that retain what they are doing is a great idea but some aspects of Duncans scenario doesn't ring true to me. As a for instance - laptop owned by the company - plugged into network at work. These days machines like that will have remote support software installed which is also used to check what is on machines from time to time. They are also generally bulk backed up. What's all this junk on here etc. There are also far more machines that are not used "at work". These are the people that test the software. The same ones that get irritated by microsoft.

Out of interest some one tested KDE against Gnome in respect to what appears to be a Kernal bug - machine can lock up given disc access. I have had this one KDE 4.6, find myself typing ahead even with properly raided 10k ultra 320 scsi on a true 64bit motherboard. ;-) Might be 15k actually, probably is. Part cured by moving from 4 to 8gb but still happens from time to time. The test found that Gnome suffered far less than KDE, dedicated KDE user as well and still is. Probably because Gnome has less in the way or is just more efficient.

All leaves me wondering if the basics will ever really get sorted out. :-) Me well I once spent several hours making Gnome more kde like and found I still didn't like it so went back. My 1.6ghz 1gb 32bit Atom netbook runs windows 7. Not too badly either for what it's intended for. Can't stick KDE on that. Others have tried. Gives you an indication where they are at. :-) The damm updates as the battery is near flat and when they choose to do them is driving me up the wall though. The "will update in 15min" offering a cancel was interesting too - canceled and it still did it as it seems they were important. Dropped what I was typing too. Acrobat updates and leaves a view that is totally unsuitable for a netbook and no way to get rid of it. Still reasons for switching to Linux but no doubt they will wise up at some point.

:-) Haven't had a rant for ages. No point really. Bit like the ideas opendesktop org had that didn't get into KDE4. Excellent if some one wants to rejig things themselves.

John
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On Mon, 15/7/13, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan at cox.net> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [kde] Prompted Restore Session
 To: kde at postbox.kde.org
 Date: Monday, 15 July, 2013, 12:52

 Jerome Yuzyk posted on Sun, 14 Jul
 2013 22:08:35 -0600 as excerpted:

 > Is there any plan to make the Restore Sessions function
 have a dialog to
 > allow what session items to restart after login?

 Not being a dev I can't answer that question in detail,
 but...

 > Currently it's all or nothing, so I've turned it off
 and fashioned my
 > own ways to repopulate my Desktops after a restart. In
 the case of a
 > crash I don't always remember what I had open. With
 something like the
 > Restore function used by Konqueror and other browsers,
 I could use
 > Restore the same way for my KWin (?) sessions.

 Two answers to think about, one dealing with the current
 situation, one 
 discussing the future based on the kde blogs, etc, I've
 read.

 Current:  KDE's session management is customizable in a
 couple different 
 ways.

 1) If you always want the same set of apps restored, you can
 set that up 
 and then tell the session manager to remember that, and
 always restore 
 it, instead of restoring what was running in the last
 session each time.

 That option is found in kde settings (they aren't for the
 most part 
 global system settings despite what kde calls them, they're
 mostly user-
 specific kde-specific settings and the kde3 name kcontrol
 was far more 
 accurate, so I refuse to call them system settings), system

 administration (again, it's NOT system, only kde, but that's
 what kde 
 calls it...), startup and shutdown, session management.

 There's a section called "On Login", with an option to
 "Restore manually 
 saved session" (in addition to the restore previous session
 and start 
 with an empty session options).

 If you set it to restore a saved session, then of course you
 need to save 
 a session for it to restore.  But once you hit that and
 hit OK or apply, 
 then if you click on the kickoff menu and select the leave
 tab, you'll 
 see a save session option that isn't there otherwise. 
 Thus, you can 
 setup kde with the apps you want running select that to save
 it for 
 future restarts.

 2) If you prefer to restore the previous session, you can
 still tell the 
 session manager what apps NOT to restart.

 The only problem with this is that I'm not sure what it
 actually expects, 
 application names (the executable name), names of the
 *.desktop files, 
 perhaps the names of the main window of the app?  I'm
 not sure.   What I 
 *DO* know is that some of the application names I enter here
 still get 
 started, or at least they have in the past, on some kde4
 versions.  I 
 haven't tracked it too closely to know if that has changed
 or not, but I 
 remember being frustrated by it at one point.

 Meanwhile, future:  Based on the blogs I've read, kde's
 session 
 management is in for some big changes, but they aren't going
 to be 
 happening in kde4, as the part that would be handling that
 is in stable 
 no-new-features, bugfix-only mode, as of kde 4.11 (there are
 4.11 betas/
 rcs out and I'm running 4.11 live branch now, updating on
 average a 
 couple times a week, probably, with 4.11.0 release due in
 mid August).

 So we're looking at kde5, which will change a number of
 things, including 
 the way kde ships, so it's worth mentioning that
 first.  With kde5, kde's 
 going far more modular, with a much smaller core and most of
 the apps and 
 features now released and updated together as a kde4
 release, to be 
 released separately and on their own schedule in kde5. 
 Additionally, 
 many features now assumed on a kde desktop will be optional
 modules, 
 still based on kde, but shipping and updating separately,
 making it far 
 easier for folks to mix and match kde components and apps
 with other non-
 kde apps if they wish.

 Meanwhile, the qt toolkit on which kde is based is also
 going more 
 modular, with bits of it being optional in qt5. 
 Additionally, bits of 
 what were formerly kde have been moved into qt5
 itself.  The overall 
 effect, therefore is a bit of blurring between an expanded
 qt5 toolkit, 
 some parts of which are now optional, and a much smaller
 kdelibs, as 
 parts of it will now be optional, and other (former) parts
 of it now 
 being (sometimes optional) parts of qt5 itself.

 Back to kde5, as I understand it (meaning I might have some
 bits of this 
 wrong), the smaller core is to be called kde frameworks, and
 there's an 
 early preview out and available to try, already.

 Now that we've got that covered, we're ready to discuss the
 bit of 
 interest to us in this thread.  Plasma-workspaces-2 is
 to ship (again as 
 a modular component now, on a more independent update
 schedule) after the 
 initial base release of kde5-frameworks.  It's the
 activities framework 
 within plasma that's getting a power boost and will be
 taking over the 
 session management from kde4's session manager.  The
 plasma folks have 
 always had a bigger vision for activities, but it has taken
 some time for 
 the concepts to mature and only bits and pieces of the
 overall much 
 bigger concept can be seen in kde4-plasma's activities.

 In the larger vision, now being implemented in
 plasma-workspaces-2, each 
 activity is its own little session manager, so people can
 for instance 
 have separate work, presentation, commute, home news,
 entertainment and 
 private activities, each of which manages its own set of
 apps and might 
 stop and resume automatically depending on where one is with
 their (in 
 this scenario mobile) machine.

 So say when the computer senses the wifi network at home and
 is plugged 
 into the big TV in the living room, it automatically resumes
 the 
 entertainment activity, starting up appropriate apps for
 playing videos 
 bigscreen, etc.

 Then when that's unplugged and the TV in the bedroom is
 plugged in as the 
 monitor, a private activity, needing a password, might
 start, that could 
 enable access to more "adult" entertainment.

 In the morning, sitting at the dining room table with
 nothing else 
 plugged in, the morning/breakfast activity could kickin
 (triggered by 
 time and nothing else plugged in), automatically displaying
 newsfeeds, 
 weather and traffic.

 Then during the commute, for drivers traffic/navigation and
 podcasts 
 could run, tracking with the gps where you are and whether
 you're ahead 
 or behind schedule, etc.

 Or for train commuters, video podcasts and/or it could
 resume the movie 
 you were watching on the way home.

 Then at work you plugin your workstation monitor and
 network, and it 
 switches to your workstation activity and app layout. 
 This one too could 
 be secured with a password if desired, or might activate
 upon mounting of 
 a particular encrypted partition or storage volume, thus not
 running the 
 associated apps without authentication, for security reasons
 (if someone 
 steals that laptop they can't get at company secrets).

 Then (if you're a salesman or at a conference), there could
 be 
 presentation and technical-note-taking activities, each with
 their own 
 associated apps.  Presumably these would be manually
 triggered.

 Of course a critical assumption in each case is that the
 plasma activity 
 manages the apps associated with it, much like a kde session
 starts its 
 own set of apps today, except that there could be many
 different 
 activities, each with its own set of apps, with each app set
 to open on a 
 particular virtual desktop, authentication for activities
 where needed, 
 with supporting apps even opening to the appropriate web
 page or place in 
 the file being edited, or automatically resuming play where
 you left off 
 in the case of media files, etc.

 So obviously big changes are in store, if that vision comes
 even close to 
 fruition.  But it's all with plasma-workspaces2 on top
 of kde5-
 frameworks, not for kde4, which with 4.11 has several major
 kde4 
 components (including plasma, FWIW kdelibs has actually been
 in no-new-
 feature maintenance-only mode for a couple versions now, tho
 I'm not 
 exactly sure when it started, only that I've seen it
 mentioned for 4.10 
 and I think 4.9 as well, but it might have been earlier)
 entering no-new-
 feature maintenance-only mode.

 -- 
 Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML
 msgs.
 "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
 and if you use the program, he is your master." 
 Richard Stallman

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