Discussion for Virtual Desktops and Activities future

[Tim Climis]

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 4:36:02 PM CDT Michail Vourlakos wrote:
> 2018-07-12 17:43 GMT+03:00 Marco Martin <notmart at gmail.com>:
> As a plasma user I am a [Multiple Activities and 1 VD] user so I am get used
> in that workflow and I wouldnt like to miss it :)
> 
> 
> I have in my mind without any
> study but only based on the personal communication, the users are separated
> like
> this:
> 
> [A] - 75% (1 Activity  + Multiple VDs)
> [B] - 20% (Multiple Activities + 1 VD)
> [C] - 5%   (Multiple Activities + Multiple Desktops)
> 

I just lurk here, but as a long time user of KDE and Plasma, I've fallen into all three 
categories at one time or another in the last 15 years, so I feel like I might have a 
perspective that's worth while. 

Of course, in KDE 3, before activities were introduced, I fell into A, since that was the only 
option. I spent a fair bit of time in category C during Plasma 4, but with Plasma 5, but I've 
now converted to category B.  I'd love to go back to C, but it's so inconvenient.

I have a single monitor (on a laptop) so windows get cluttered really quickly. In KDE 3, 
virtual desktops were great for that.  I had one desktop dedicated to email, one to IM, one 
to a web browser, one to programming homework, and one to other homework (papers 
and the like).  Each desktop had different launchers on the panel, and different 
superkaramba widgets (I think - this was more than 10 years ago, so if that was never a 
feature, forgive me).

For Plasma 4, it lost the ability to have different panels per VD, but it did (eventually) allow 
different plasmoids per VD, so a lot of my panel customizations moved to launcher 
plasmoids. But I also expanded my desktop model from KDE 3 to use activities. So for 
example, I had a “general” activity with a desktop for my email, and a desktop for general 
web browsing, etc.  And then a “development” activity which had a desktop for my IDE, 
and a desktop for file transfers, and desktop for dev related web browsing (stack overflow, 
documentation, etc.)

But that had short-comings.  The number of virtual desktops was fixed, so in order to have 
enough for one activity, I had too many for others.

Then Plasma 5 came along, and desktops all had to share the same plasmoids.  And 
everything continued to share the same panels.  So in order to keep separate launchers 
and plasmoids per desktop, I switched to many activities with a single desktop each, and 
keep them open in groups.  So my web browser, email, and console activities are pretty 
much always running, while my office work activity, game activity, and development 
activities start and stop. And then to save my sanity, I wrote an activity system tray 
plasmoid to allow fast switching between activities.

So the features I'd like to see ideally would be “activity as a logical grouping of virtual 
desktops.”  In my perfect world, I could have say, 13 virtual desktops, divided unevenly 
across 4 activities.  Each desktop could have different plasmoids and panels.  And 
plasmoids and panels could be pinned like windows, so they could be attached to a single 
desktop, or shared across them (including across desktops on different activities).  I'm 
sure that's not easy, but it's my 2 cents.

---Tim
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