Im pretty new to Kde 4.8 and I can not figure out how to get this behaviour that I used to have in Gnome: 1. Desktop 1: developer/misc (browser, editor/ide, diff, etc..) 2. Desktop 2: virtual machines (vbox) 3. Desktop 3: graphic (gimp, inkscape, phatch) 4. Desktop 4: file management (ftp, ssh, etc..) In gnome is possible to configure the windows to **always** appear in a specific desktop, and this is what I want to achieve in Kde. I googled around so much, and looks like activities can't do that (yet), becose using the window's menu only works for the current session, and get lost after reboot. By the way, I suppose that activities *can* do that, becose in the default activities that come with Kde 4.8 Gimp used to show only in the *photo* activity (I gave a look to the activity configuration but I didn't find anything about this behavior). Onestly, my goal is to obtain this scenario, if it is not possible with activities but with desktops, for me is ok. So, any idea on how to obtain this behavior in Kde 4.8? I already read this similar question , but im looking for a _permanent_ solution.

I recently bought a new laptop (ASUS ROG Strix SCAR ). It has a 2560x1440 pixel screen, which is great for my imaging work, but makes text hard for me to read. So, I set up three activities, one with 2560x1440, one 1689x1050, and one 1280x720. I use the higher resolution for my imaging and graphics, and then the lower resolution ones for reading blogs, emails, and writing documents. I change resolutions on entering the activity by means of an xrandr script that runs on activation, e.g. xrandr --output eDP --mode 1680x1050 The problem I have is that I have different widgets in each activity. Fig 1 is a screenshot of my high resolution screen (which I call "4k"). Fig 2 is a screenshot of my lower resolution screen (which I call "2K"). When I switch from the 2K screen back to the 4K screen, the widgets rearrange as shown in Fig 3. Fig1: Fig2: Fig3 (upon return): My workaround is to create a second 4K activity that has *no* widgets (which I call activity "4K play"). When I want to switch back from 2K to 4K, if I quickly go 2K -> 4K play -> 4K. Then widget positions are preserved. What I believe is happening is that when I go directly from 2K to 4K, the widgets are rearranged as if it were a 2K screen *before* the xrandr script is run changing it to 4K. But I don't know. Is there a better way to preserve widget positions when changing screen resolution between activities?

How do I associate applications with KDE Activities? It doesn't seem obvious how it works. Are there any tricks?

On my plasma 5.24.6 I have this entry that seems deprecated, supposedly to create links for files and folders to an activity or other. I couldn't even find what linking a file to an activity could mean. I was expecting something like opening that file/folder into a specific activity, restricting it to that activity - but that's not it at all. (For *that* window rules are needed. ) [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/9xzlzm/comment/e9ybuyy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) is the only meaningful info I could get: it should create a link on the desktop in a given activity if the option was selected somewhere... [Here](https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=126257) there is an old discussing showing this might have been dead since Plasma 5.2. If this is true it seem like a deprecated feature, the option is absent in settings, and a google search gives nothing more. Can I remove that buggy menu entry?

**Config**: I'm running Kubuntu 21.04 with KDE Plasma 5.21.4 on a Dell Precision 5750. I use a combination of Desktops and Activities to compartmentalize my work. Loving it. **Problem** One minor question. When I reboot, I have to go into a few applications and set them (using Alt-F3) to "All Desktops" and "All Activities". Mostly communication like things, such as Slack, Zoom, Telegram, etc.. This is especially a problem with Zoom. Any NEW zoom window requires me to go find it, on whatever desktop/activity it is on. **Question** Is there any way to force these to always be "All Desktops" and "All Activities"?

Plasma activities are a way of separating different workflows or types of operations with the computer depending on various factors (is it reading or writing? surfing the internet or watching videos? studying or playing? history or language? Latin or German? etc etc). Each activity can have its own desktop widgets, wallpaper etc. It would be interesting to be able to separate between applications, windows and files by opening them by default in different activities, instead of the present behavior where each is opened only in the current activity. For example, at the present I have 4 different activities, depending on my present interests. I want some applications to be available in all activities (Firefox, Dolphin), some in just one activity (the terminal), and I would also like that some files are opened in a different activity, even if opened with the same application. I am posting this in order to provide an answer, but I will edit the answer over time, because there are different degrees of complexity that I haven't yet completely mastered.

I find useful the desktop grid to drag & drop windows of applications between virtual desktops and I know that it can be displayed with a shortcut. But sometimes I do it more often and when I am using a mouse so I am curious whether we can do it by clicking a button (or by a command that I can put in a launcher) in the way I do for activities ... or the way we can do (I realized it in the end!... but I don't do it) - with the pager widget, which allows dragging windows between the small buttons on the panel (too small for this purpose, too large to have them on the panel all the time as far as I concerned): Also, I know an alternative is hot corners - but I still want a button (I always bump into hot corners by error- sorry that I'm so picky!) Plasma 4 had an extension/widget for that purpose but I cannot find one for Plasma 5.

How to print the name of the current kde activity alone? The activity bar displays all activities, highlighting the current one. I would find useful an unobtrusive widget to print the current activity name only. thank you p.

So the developers excluded toolbars from activities and they are uniform among all activities. A lot was written about how they practically killed the idea of activities. *But is there any **workaround** what so ever?* Like to make a different content of the tool bar for each activity or some grouping widgets (Quick Launcher, Folder View, etc.), which would be able to have different content for each activity? BTW, for someone who knows KDE API and ways, it should be a job for a half an hour max, to adjust Quick Launcher and Folder View to have it's content Activity-dependent. Unfortunately, I only develop in .NET...

I've been using GNOME 3 for a while and I miss something like [KDE Activities](https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma#Activities) . A nice explanation about KDE Activities can be found on [this page](https://www.datamation.com/open-source/the-mystery-of-kde-activities-1.html) : > [...] 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. > > The most common way to use Activities is to create one for each > general task that you do. For instance, you might set up one Activity > with all the apps and widgets that you need for coding or writing. > Another desktop might have your web browser, email reader, chat > application and other Internet applications. Yet another might be your > dumping ground for articles that you want to read later. > > Alternatively, you might set up Activities according to location, with > different desktops for work, school, and home. [...] Is there something like that for GNOME 3? I would like to have an standard activity and another activity for studying.

I would like to start a few of my daily applications automatically during startup and assign them to proper activities. Currently I use 4 activities: - Internet (Chrome), - communication (Thunderbird and some IM), - settings (ksysguard, TeamViz and alike) and - terminals. I tried to use kwin advanced windows rules. But unfortunately, on the Size & position tab, after setting Activity to Apply initially, I am left with two possible activities - an empty field and - All activities Why are the names of my activities not shown?

When I'm at work, I use KDE activities and map them to my projects. I always use the same applications on every project, so I'd like to keep my windows visible when I change the activity. For the moment, what I do is go through every window, right click on the title bar, and check the checkbox that makes the window appear on all activities. How can I configure my windows default value for this choice? I'd like every window to appear on all activities by default.

Sometimes, I use KDE, and one of the things that I like the most in KDE 4 is the activity concept. At work, it is very useful because I often work on several different projects during one day. Switching to another activity enables me to change the widgets, so that I can have access to folders related to the current project, for instance. I've decided to use this concept in the shell, so I have coded a small bash function called "switch", which sets aliases useful for the current project, e.g. alias cdwww=~/public_html/current_project/www , and so on. **My question is** : Is there a way I can synchronise KDE activities with shell activities, that is calling 'switch myproj' on every opened terminal when switching to activity 'myproj' through KDE and *vice versa* (bonus question)? **Another question** : how do I make my newly created aliases work in all consoles? Is there a way I can detect every opened terminal in konsole or in gnome-terminal and execute my function in it? EDIT: here is the switch function, located at the end of my .bashrc file, feel free to comment: function switch() { if [ ! -d ~/.switch ] then mkdir ~/.switch fi if [ ! -f ~/.switch/proj.save ] then touch ~/.switch/proj.save fi echo "$1" > ~/.switch/proj.save case $1 in meddispar ) echo "Switching to meddispar..." echo "setting cdproj alias" alias cdproj="cd ~/public_html/onp/" echo "setting cdwww alias" alias cdwww="cd ~/public_html/onp/www/" echo "setting cc alias" alias cc="cdwww && php bin/php/ezcache.php --clear-all --purge && cd -" ;; darjeeling ) echo "Switching to darjeeling..." echo "setting cdproj alias" alias cdproj="cd ~/public_html/darjeeling/" echo "setting cdwww alias" alias cdwww="cd ~/public_html/darjeeling/www/" echo "setting cc alias" alias cc="rm -rf ~/public_html/darjeeling/www/var/cache/*" ;; * ) echo "'$1'? WTF?" rm ~/.switch/proj.save ;; esac } if [ -f ~/.switch/proj.save ] then switch cat ~/.switch/proj.save fi As per Gilles' answer, here is what I have got: greg@tiny :) ~ > qdbus |ack ctivity org.kde.ActivityController-1949 org.kde.ActivityManager greg@tiny :) ~ > qdbus org.kde.ActivityManager / /ActivityManager /MainApplication /StatusNotifierWatcher /connections /kbuildsycoca /kded /kxkb /modules /modules/StatusNotifierWatcher /modules/activitymanager /modules/device_automounter /modules/dnssdwatcher /modules/favicons /modules/freespacenotifier /modules/keyboard /modules/khotkeys /modules/kpackagekitd /modules/kremotecontroldaemon /modules/ktimezoned /modules/kwrited /modules/nepomuksearchmodule /modules/networkmanagement /modules/networkstatus /modules/powerdevil /modules/randrmonitor /modules/remotedirnotify /modules/solidautoeject /modules/statusnotifierwatcher /org /org/freedesktop /org/freedesktop/PowerManagement /org/freedesktop/PowerManagement/Inhibit /org/kde /org/kde/networkmanagement /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/10 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/11 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/12 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/13 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/14 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/15 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/16 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/17 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/2 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/3 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/4 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/5 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/6 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/7 /org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/8 greg@tiny :) ~ > qdbus org.kde.ActivityManager /ActivityManager method QStringList org.kde.ActivityManager.ActivitiesForResource(QString uri) method QString org.kde.ActivityManager.ActivityIcon(QString id) method QString org.kde.ActivityManager.ActivityName(QString id) signal void org.kde.ActivityManager.ActivityNameChanged(QString id, QString name) method QString org.kde.ActivityManager.AddActivity(QString name) method QStringList org.kde.ActivityManager.AvailableActivities() method QString org.kde.ActivityManager.CurrentActivity() signal void org.kde.ActivityManager.CurrentActivityChanged(QString id) method bool org.kde.ActivityManager.IsBackstoreAvailable() method void org.kde.ActivityManager.RegisterActivityController(QString service) method void org.kde.ActivityManager.RegisterResourceWindow(uint wid, QString uri) method QStringList org.kde.ActivityManager.RegisteredActivityControllers() method void org.kde.ActivityManager.RemoveActivity(QString id) method void org.kde.ActivityManager.SetActivityIcon(QString id, QString name) method void org.kde.ActivityManager.SetActivityName(QString id, QString name) method bool org.kde.ActivityManager.SetCurrentActivity(QString id) method void org.kde.ActivityManager.UnregisterResourceWindow(uint wid, QString uri) method QString org.kde.ActivityManager._allInfo() method QString org.kde.ActivityManager._serviceIteration() method QDBusVariant org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get(QString interface_name, QString property_name) method QVariantMap org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.GetAll(QString interface_name) method void org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Set(QString interface_name, QString property_name, QDBusVariant value) method QString org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable.Introspect() greg@tiny :) ~ > qdbus org.kde.ActivityController-1949 /ActivityController method void org.kde.ActivityController.ActivityAdded(QString id) method void org.kde.ActivityController.ActivityRemoved(QString id) method void org.kde.ActivityController.ResourceWindowRegistered(uint wid, QString uri) method void org.kde.ActivityController.ResourceWindowUnregistered(uint wid, QString uri) method QDBusVariant org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get(QString interface_name, QString property_name) method QVariantMap org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.GetAll(QString interface_name) method void org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Set(QString interface_name, QString property_name, QDBusVariant value) method QString org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable.Introspect() EDIT : I completely rewrote my script using python, and now the whole project is available here : https://github.com/greg0ire/switch

I have an application which is forced upon start to Desktop 2 and acitivity B. If I am currently in desktop 1 of activity A and start this program, it opens in the right place, but my active desktop is changed to desktop 2 of activity A. Is there some way to disable this?

Is there a way to run a program when specific activity starts on KDE 4.8.9? PD.: KDE has a feature called Activity. It is designed for change your desktop settings. For example, KDE has some Activities by default like Desktop, Desktop Icons, Photos Activity, ... and each takes different Energy Saving Settings, wallpaper, ...