Plasma/Workspace Sprint/ActivitiesAndVirtualDesktops

Activities and virtual desktops

Introduction

Activities are a new goal-oriented way to associate opened applications, files, contacts.

Activities have the following advantages over virtual desktops:

• match closer to user goals
• persistency: activities can be stopped and resumed. When an activity is stopped, the workspace stores the state of the applications within this activity (using the same system used by X11 session management).

Relationship between activities and virtual desktops

Activities sit on top of virtual desktops. For example:

• Home
  • Virtual Desktop 1
    • KMail
    • Konqueror
• Hack Activity
  • Virtual Desktop 1
    • KDevelop
    • Qt Designer
  • Virtual Desktop 2
    • Qt Assistant
• Play Activity
  • Sudoku

In many cases, activities can be used instead of virtual desktops. In some cases it can make sense to use virtual desktops inside an activity (see the Hack activity)

Fallback

If a user prefers virtual desktops, he can easily ignore the activity concept by staying with the default activity and using virtual desktops within it.