https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=510753
--- Comment #4 from Martin Steigerwald <[email protected]> --- Thanks for developing Plasma. Seems that is intentional¹. That is sad. I relied on the functionality to start and stop activities and it worked very well for me. For example for a writing task or working on a project or on development / packaging. For example I can have Kate, Dolphin and Okular open with some PDFs and on X11 when suspending the activity and resuming it again it all appears exactly where I left it, including the exact page in the PDF or the exact cursor location in the text file. And even with Wayland it could work, probably at the moment without restoring the window position. I cannot test anymore, cause while Plasma 6.5 appears to be the first Plasma version I can use with Wayland on my main laptop I cannot start and stop activities anymore. I was really grateful for this feature. It helped me a lot. This was perfect for activities I do not use all the time but sometimes. After upgrading from Plasma 6.3 to Plasma 6.5 I had >20 activities in my activity switcher which is 1. very unpractical 2. and a possible privacy violation when switching between activities while screen sharing in a video conference. Cause I may not be wanting to share with everyone what projects I work on. My only sensible option for now was to actually *delete* all the activities I do not use all the time and thus their settings, like backgrounds, applets, open apps and so on. Cause anything more than 3 to 5 activities does not make sense to me when I need to keep them open at all times. I do not like to scatter my attention like this. This was quite a loss for me. Being able to start and stop activities is a very important feature for me. It helps me to focus on what is important in the moment by just having those activities open that I use at a given time. I do not want all of them open at all times cause I do not want to work on all of the tasks or engage with all of the activities at all times. Basically now I do not even get the point of activities anymore. Cause with that virtual removed I can just use virtual desktops!? The genius of that feature was basically to have a session management within a session management. For me that was the whole point of it. For me a major reason on why to use activities is gone. With what I had in Plasma 6.3 and all versions before that worked similar I finally was able to use them as a power feature that AFAIK no other desktop environment had. I was bragging about it: "Look, what Plasma can do!". Now that is broken. Now I have to start all the apps for an activity again, position their windows, open the files I was working on and so on. Please reconsider. One note regarding Flatpak: I did not use a single Flatpak app in such a context. I use Flatpaks. But only for apps that my distribution does not provide or where I see a benefit of containerization for security. I used start/stop with distribution packaged KDE apps *only*. And there it worked like a charm. I also understood to only stop activities that have windows that where not shared between activities. I used sharing between activities only for two reasons: 1. Make an email I opened as an extra window in KMail available in another activity for reference or cut and paste temporarily. 2. Apps that should appear on all activities. Like Basket for note taking or KeepassXC for passwords. Am I the only one who understood how to use that start/stop feature of activities in that way? For sure I hope whatever you come up with: Keep it then. Do not change functionality in a way that breaks workflows users rely on. Or am I rely only one who has used activities in such a way? Activities used this way was one of the most underestimated and underrated features of Plasma. Sure discoverability was not great. But once I got it I thought: Wow! I really appreciate the stability work for Plasma 6.5. Thanks for that! And I would like to see more of it. But change for the sake of change is not going to make things better. A slower pace with change and more focus on rough edges is what I would like to see. Over the lifetime of activities you² changed them over and over and over again. Whatever you do, please come up with something and then *stick with it*. For a long time. Cause otherwise I am not sure how to determine whether I can rely on a given feature for implementing the workflows that suit me best. That it what I like to be able to: Rely on features to be there in years to come so I can base workflows I create for myself and others on it. So this time, please think this through to the end. Of course I respect that those who do the work get to decide. But this is my feedback. [1] https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/upcoming-changes-to-activities-in-plasma-6-5/ [2] As in whoever was developing for activities at any given time. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are watching all bug changes.
