Ubuntu – a activity in KDE and what can I do with it

kdekubuntuplasma

In the top right corner of a standard KDE/Kubuntu installation you'll see this:

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But seriously, I seem to be unable to understand what those "activities" are and what it would enable me to profit from. It just pops up like an "add widget" screen with just four options:

  • New Activity – default plasma widgets desktop – is this a bug that it's called like that?
  • Search and Launch – sort of over-spacious netbook interface?
  • Photos Activity – I don't have any pictures local on my machine, useless for me.
  • Desktop Icons – traditional style desktop-icons-only

Choosing one of those options seems to create a completely new desktop "plasma". Then why is this called Activity? Am I missing something?

Is this is nifty feature I've been missing on for a few years now or is this not that exciting? How do I use this as it's supposed to work?


Googling for what this is supposed to be give me all kind of vague descriptions like this one:

No feature defines the KDE 4 release series more than Activities. At the same time, no feature is so little understood — Fedora even has a package for removing the desktop toolkit, which provides mouse access to Activities.

But, when you take the time to learn about Activities, you'll find them a natural extension of the desktop metaphor that just might help you to work more efficiently.

Activities are a super-set of Virtual Desktops. They don't replace Virtual Desktops — in fact, each Activity can have its own set of Virtual Desktops if you choose. Instead, Activities are alternative desktops, each of which can have its own wallpaper, icons, and widgets.

Sorry, but after reading such a vague and impractical story I'm out. Can someone give me an overview of what I can do with it? I guess this is supposed to provide a way to separate private and business work, but then, how?

Best Answer

I had exactly the same issues and questions with "Activities" as you. I found the video Wicky posted to be instrumental in filling in gaps in my understanding of how Activities are suppose to improve upon traditional virtual desktops. The most important thing I took away from watching the video was that activities are just another type of virtual desktop that allow for more fine tuned control over your experience. Interesting examples of one or more features that could potentially be enabled in any activity are as follows:

  • Changing your power settings - say a presentation mode actvity - such that your screen never times out
  • Changing your default language / default keyboard to a different locale
  • Changing your default permissions; all apps launced run as root root - or - contrarily all apps have read-only access (sort of a super "incognito" mode I can't wait for this)!!
  • Changing your default printers
  • Changing you default email and calendar (from personal to work etc)
  • Restoring the most commonly used apps for that activity. Moreover, apps are not launched, and thus memory not allocated until you actually use that virtual desktop, and could all be stopped when you decided to press the stop button for that activity. Yes, currently the document you had open last isn't necessary launched, but that is a likely future feature.
  • Changing the default folders / widgets displayed on the desktop
  • Changing the way that scrolling and different button mouse clicks work

Aside from power-settings, mouse clicks, and basic application restoration, I'm not sure any of these other features have yet been implemented. Indeed, my desire to figure this out came from someone else’s ask Ubuntu question where they were trying to write the app for language switching upon virtual desktop changes.

Overall I think the thing most holding back progress is a nice GUI tool to configure activities to execute commands or apps, and seems a likely next step.