KDE is considering eliminating Activities in Plasma 6.x. What are they and how would they affect us?

This month Plasma 6 will arrive along with Frameworks 6 and the February 2024 applications. It is an important moment due to the changes, and it can also be used to make some decisions. One that remains to be seen is whether KDE eliminates Plasma Activities. At first it was thought that they are not used enough, but commenting that they could be eliminated has caused users who do take advantage of them to raise their voices and explain why it would be a bad idea, but this might not be enough.

So he explains Nate Graham on his blog, where on weekends he also tells us about the news in the K project. There seems to be a problem with the Activities of KDE, one or several, since it is part of the desktop that does not receive much attention and that makes it full of bugs. One solution is to cut corners, and the other would be to take care of them a little more.

What are KDE Plasma activities

KDE Plasma activities are one more twist to virtual desktops, or at least that's how I see them. When we have at least two virtual desktops we can do things like have a full-screen video tutorial on one and Writer or a text editor on another. By sliding four fingers from one side to the other if we are in Wayland we can go from one to the other in an instant. You can create the virtual desktops you need and separate the windows open on them.

On the other hand, activities allow us to have another version of our interface with its own virtual desktops and windows, and they can even have a different wallpaper. To give an example, if we are going to take a trip and we have a lot to prepare, we can create an activity, put a beach wallpaper on it, open the browser, a notes application, the calculator... whatever comes to mind. And everything will be better organized than if we only used virtual desktops.

Three points to keep in mind:

• We will not be able to access them if we do not create at least a second activity. It can be done from System Preferences and by default they are selected with the keys GOAL + TAB.
• Activities, at least currently, do not separate sections like personal folders. I mention this because if we leave icons on the desktop of one activity, they will also be on the others.
• They are not a new session, and we cannot have a program that only allows one window in one activity and another instance in the other.

It's basically an attempt to organize things better, and is similar to the function Workspaces of Vivaldi.

What will happen to the Activities

The future of KDE Plasma Activities It is uncertain. With the problems it currently causes and believing that not many people used it, they had considered eliminating them, and that idea has not been completely ruled out. Graham says the feature is at risk and could be removed if people don't step forward and provide technical work to fix known bugs or improve the feature.

The developer says he would like to see it change and become something where each activity had different settings and settings, something we already see in the wallpaper, but it would be taking the feature to another level. These would be more like Profiles plus Activities, and would function as new sessions:

“Personally, I would like to see Activities become a feature where each Activity has a separate set of settings and configuration data, but with access to the same user files. Additionally, you could configure individual applications that you use in various activities (such as music players) to use shared settings and configuration data, which would basically be the "profiles" feature that many web browsers now have, but applied automatically to all applications. applications you want.

I feel a bit the same as the KDE developers: I don't use it because virtual desktops are enough for me and they also seem confusing to me. If they end up disappearing, I won't miss them. If they improve them, maybe I'll use them.