Plasma 5 features question

[Frank616]

I have been told that Plasma 5 does not have the same depth as the 4.x series, specifically that having different wallpapers for each desktop is no longer possible. Is it also true that the 'activities' idea has been lost in Plasma 5? Is the pager gone? Can anyone confirm or deny these?

I need to get a spare disk and give it a try, I know.... (My test bed desktop won't boot from USB)

Thanks.

Frank.

[claydoh]

Depth? Somewhat, but the now smaller gap is diminishing regularly. Personally, I don't have anything missing that I was using in KDE4, but each person has their own use cases.

Yes, different wallpapers per Virtual desktop are no longer there
No, Activities are definitely still there. I am using 3 at the moment.
Pager is there. Not sure when that came back, but if it isn't there in the Plasma version at 15.10's release, it sure is in updates via kubuntu-backports

[Frank616]

Yes, different wallpapers per Virtual desktop are no longer there

That saddens me a lot.

I color code my desktops using color-shifted backgrounds that are otherwise identical. I find it helps me greatly to keep track of where I am. I've used and loved that since Xandros 1.0, and I've not used any other desktop environment for that very reason. Only KDE supported it of all the ones I've tried.

Is there any move afoot to add that feature back in to the 'narrowing gap' of features lacking in KDE5?

In the meantime, I may stick with 14.04, even though digiKam still has a LOT of stability issues.

My testbed Core2 Duo has a caddy for the system drive. I guess I should shove another one in it, and try 15.10.

Frank.

[vinnywright]

That saddens me a lot.

I color code my desktops using color-shifted backgrounds that are otherwise identical. I find it helps me greatly to keep track of where I am. I've used and loved that since Xandros 1.0, and I've not used any other desktop environment for that very reason. Only KDE supported it of all the ones I've tried.

Is there any move afoot to add that feature back in to the 'narrowing gap' of features lacking in KDE5?

In the meantime, I may stick with 14.04, even though digiKam still has a LOT of stability issues.

My testbed Core2 Duo has a caddy for the system drive. I guess I should shove another one in it, and try 15.10.

Frank.

you could try to get used to using activity’s instead of desktops as you can have different wallpapers and widgets on all your activity's ,,,,,,a "meta+tab" will walk you through your activity's

VINNY

[claydoh]

Is there any move afoot to add that feature back in to the 'narrowing gap' of features lacking in KDE5?

For this one, no not likely right now. However, Activities should get better usability(?) features that should make it easier to use them in the same manner as virtual desktops, such as an Activities pager similar to the regular pager.

[Frank616]

Vinny:

you could try to get used to using activity’s instead of desktops as you can have different wallpapers and widgets on all your activity's

I'm downloading 15.10 now and will create a DVD. I found a spare 160 GB disk that I put in a caddy for this machine, so will install to that from the DVD image.

You dear friends here in the forum may have to educate me as to the difference between desktops and activities. I thought they were the same.

Frank.

[claydoh]

Vinny:



I'm downloading 15.10 now and will create a DVD. I found a spare 160 GB disk that I put in a caddy for this machine, so will install to that from the DVD image.

You dear friends here in the forum may have to educate me as to the difference between desktops and activities. I thought they were the same.

Frank.

I would seriously suggest you try out 15.10, and not 15.04. 15.04 has been a bit rough for many users, until you update it via ppas. 15.10 has much more stable versions of Plasma and applications already included.

[Frank616]

claydoh:

That was a typo. I have 15.10, and just now booted from DVD on my test machine. I need to find out what is on that old disk I want to use as a system disk first, then I'll install it. Stay tuned!

[Frank616]

Claydoh and Vinny:

OK, installed and working.

As Claydoh stated, I cannot change wallpapers for each desktop. I tried that, and the same wallpaper is installed on all 6 desktops that I created (within that activity). I have long used 6 desktop for Online, Text, File, VM, Misc, and Graphic. I find that this breaks down and organizes the 6 areas that I usually work on.

I then created 6 activities. First time I have ever tried that. At Vinny's suggestion, I used the "Windows" key | tab combination, and that currently slides to a different activity in succession. NOW I see the default wallpaper on 5 of the activities, and the wallpaper I tried to switch to on one of them. Each activity also now has 6 desktops, all with identical wallpaper for that activity. Now, that is WAY overkill. Anyway, I can fix that.

So, now I am struggling to understand the difference between desktops and activities. One just appears to nest the other. Any help here would be much appreciated. As stated earlier, I always thought that activities and desktops were the same thing. Now, while I SEE the difference, I do not UNDERSTAND the difference, and the reason behind it.

Further, is it possible to get an activities 'pager' rather than having to alt | metakey through them consecutively? Is it possible to select any animation between activities other than the slide, which appears to be default?

Frank.

OK, found a widget that I can put in the panel that serves as a 'pager' for the activities. Still cannot find anything for an animation between activities other than the slide.

PPS: Activities seem to sort alphabetically. Anyway to stop that, and force them to stay in the order in which they were created, other than to add a number to each activity name?

[Frank616]

OK, I keep finding more differences...

I used to create desktop shortcuts / icons. These would allow me to edit the command line of the desktop shortcut, which meant that I could add 'sudo' to the command that calls Dolphin, and create a one-click superuser version of dolphin. This appears to be gone in KDE5.

How would I do this the KDE5 way?

Frank.