> The third option is managing activities. I think the set of users that make any use of this features tends to zero
Hell yeah! Does anyone know how to effectively use KDE's activities?
When I tried to use it, I was expecting something that would remember opened apps and the placement of their windows, which is what my intuition said "activities" should be like, a set of programs and an arrangement of their windows that represents a particular "activity", like having a PDF of SICP opened on half of my screen, a Racket repl on the other and a browser with some specific tabs on my other display, but if KDE's activities can give me this, I haven't figured out any way in hell to get it to do this. And if it's supposed to do something else entirely, then no documentation or tutorial ever managed to explain to me what it does in a way I could understand. Don't get me wrong, I love KDE and it's the single Linux DE I can stand besides xfce, but it has a bunch of "wtf" features that I just stay away from, and they made them attract the attention of new users in a way that makes them go through hours of WTFs before finally abandoning the feature and deciding never to touch that part of KDE again.
It's strange, because your first description is exactly what it does. In each activity you can add a set of widgets and use certain applications, you can even configure the way the desktop is shown (Search and Run, Folderview) differently for each view.
I usually use two different Activities named Work and Fun. In Work I have my text editors, konsole with multiple tabs, a couple of widgets related to those apps, my work email and maybe some books for reference. In Fun I have the web browser, Ksudoku opened and widgets with jokes, rss feeds, email, weather information, etc.
It's easy to notice what I have configured: a distraction-free environment to focus on my work and a distraction-full one to relax; just two clicks between the them! Couple this with the Pommodoro technique (25 minutes, 5 minutes play) and KDE has made me a very productive and happy worker.
Hell yeah! Does anyone know how to effectively use KDE's activities?
When I tried to use it, I was expecting something that would remember opened apps and the placement of their windows, which is what my intuition said "activities" should be like, a set of programs and an arrangement of their windows that represents a particular "activity", like having a PDF of SICP opened on half of my screen, a Racket repl on the other and a browser with some specific tabs on my other display, but if KDE's activities can give me this, I haven't figured out any way in hell to get it to do this. And if it's supposed to do something else entirely, then no documentation or tutorial ever managed to explain to me what it does in a way I could understand. Don't get me wrong, I love KDE and it's the single Linux DE I can stand besides xfce, but it has a bunch of "wtf" features that I just stay away from, and they made them attract the attention of new users in a way that makes them go through hours of WTFs before finally abandoning the feature and deciding never to touch that part of KDE again.