I have plasma set to use 4 desktop activities, one for each virtual desktop.
For some reason there are 6 activities (why?) and at each login it can, and occasionally does, happen that a different activity is mapped to a virtual desktop. The configuration will stay for days, even a couple of weeks, and then, all of a sudden one morning when I boot up, an activity will appear on the 'wrong' virtual desktop (not a big problem) and one of the unused activities will appear on a virtual desktop (definitely a nuisance).
How can I delete the undesired activities (there is no delete X when I zoom out)?
Why does the one appearing on virtual 1, vt 2, etc. keep changing without any action on my part?
On Tuesday 27 October 2009 17:17:26 Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
I have plasma set to use 4 desktop activities, one for each virtual desktop.
For some reason there are 6 activities (why?)
I expected 5, but not six! Read on.
and at each login it can, and occasionally does, happen that a different activity is mapped to a virtual desktop. The configuration will stay for days, even a couple of weeks, and then, all of a sudden one morning when I boot up, an activity will appear on the 'wrong' virtual desktop (not a big problem) and one of the unused activities will appear on a virtual desktop (definitely a nuisance).
How can I delete the undesired activities (there is no delete X when I zoom out)?
There is a bug in the 4.3 plasma - it forgets that you already have one desktop - so if you ask for 4 desktops you get 4 plus the one you already have. And that one doesn't have the ability to be closed. I can't explain where your sixth one came from, though.
I understand that in 4.4 (not yet released) this problem doesn't occur.
Why does the one appearing on virtual 1, vt 2, etc. keep changing without any action on my part?
This is something that some experience and many don't. I haven't seen any explanation of it either. I had the same problem and stopped using the facility in the hope that it will be better next time around. All the same I'd like to know why this happens on some systems.
Sorry I can't help.
Anne
Anne Wilson wrote:
I understand that in 4.4 (not yet released) this
problem doesn't occur.
You answered with what I already knew, of course. Growing pains. This is simply a bug that has not been fixed yet.
I do like the 4 different activities on 4 desktops, as it finally, after 10 years of fedora/redhat, actually makes having virtual desktops useful to me (I usually close programs when I have finished using them, so it is rare that I have more than 3 open at a time and it is rare that I need to move one to another desktop).
I will likely continue to use this feature, despite the glitch, as it is not totally unusable.
Do plasmoids on activities that are not being used eat up cpu capacity?
On Tuesday 27 October 2009 17:58:36 Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
Do plasmoids on activities that are not being used eat up cpu capacity?
I think it depends what they are. Those that dynamically update, such as weather plasmoids, probably do. Those that are fairly static, like the picture frame, probably eat very little. You may have to run a monitor plasmoid (personally I still like to have gkrellm running) while you do some tests. I notice that whenever I check top I see X and kwin as the top two contenders, though individually they don't seem too bad. I should state, though, that this laptop is 4.5 years old, so it's not too surprising that it's sometimes working hard.
Anne
Anne Wilson wrote:
Those that dynamically update, such as weather plasmoids, probably do. Those that are fairly static, like the picture frame, probably eat very little.
Sounds good. On my desktop computer, weather and rss update only every 30 minutes here, so should be minimal strain. Picture frame, when I use it, changes every 2 minutes or so, so that would suggest somewhat increased load, but also minimal.
Again, you have stilled my concerns, so I can likely even begin using plasmoids on my 3.5 year old laptop, where I always refrained, due to concerns about sapping processor power :-)
On Tuesday 27 October 2009 20:18:20 Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
Anne Wilson wrote:
Those that dynamically update, such as weather plasmoids, probably do. Those that are fairly static, like the picture frame, probably eat very little.
Sounds good. On my desktop computer, weather and rss update only every 30 minutes here, so should be minimal strain. Picture frame, when I use it, changes every 2 minutes or so, so that would suggest somewhat increased load, but also minimal.
Again, you have stilled my concerns, so I can likely even begin using plasmoids on my 3.5 year old laptop, where I always refrained, due to concerns about sapping processor power :-)
I know those concerns, only too well :-) This laptop is 4.5 years old, and wasn't state-of-the-art when I bought it. It has ATi Mobility Radeon X600 graphics , so it's little short of amazing that I can use desktop effects at all, but I carefully use only the minimum of effects, and temporarily disable them if watching video, for instance.
Again, I don't have too many plasmoids, but the number does seem to grow over time, when things prove themselves useful. Currently I have two folderviews (to remote drives), a picture frame, yawp, pastebin, analogue cloc showing two time-zones and opendesktop plasmoids. The only problems I have relate to firefox, not to plasma or plasmoids.
Anne
Anne Wilson wrote:
I don't have too many plasmoids
I observe that plasmoids mostly just duplicate applications, and I prefer the full-fledged apps with all of the bells and whistles, as opposed to scaled- down plasmoidal apps. Also, you have to minimize or clear away everything from the desktop to use a plasmoid, so you might as well just use the real thing in a window.
I do, however, like the weather report, a calculator, a notepad and an rss aggregator (mostly for scanning headlines, but generally I then move to google reader to do serious reading) on the desktop.
After reading an article about the future of the desktop, I tried removing the panel entirely and putting all of the functions - time, s-tasks, sys- tray, kmenu - on the desk as plasmoids, but, firstly, it was not functional, as I had to constantly rotate to the virtual desktop with those plasmoids, and secondly, having quite a number of plasmoids really does not make for an aesthetically pleasing desktop, as it looks like a messy jumble (I always hated shortcut icons on the desktop, and this appears much the same). If they were all standard sizes, it would be easier to arrange them to make it look classy. Plasmoids have a limited value, primarily for system functions, but you don't see people showing off screenshots of their beautiful desktops since the advent of the plasmoid.
Luckily, I have Intel graphics on both computers and don't have to disable anything to watch video. Intel rocks, these days, after a very rough 18 months that ended when I moved to f12α in late August.
Firefox problems? Luckily, none here at all, but I use the desktop 99% of the time, so the laptop is just for the bedroom, and I rarely use a computer in bed, re: proper sleep hygiene ;-)
On Tuesday 27 October 2009 22:27:33 Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
Anne Wilson wrote:
I don't have too many plasmoids
I do, however, like the weather report, a calculator, a notepad and an rss aggregator (mostly for scanning headlines, but generally I then move to google reader to do serious reading) on the desktop.
If you do serious calculations then you need a calculator, but for the quick and dirty jobs when you're just saving brainpower, krunner will act as a calculator. I do find this quite useful for quick jobs like adding up a complex column of figures (I don't think a very long column would be practical) then calculating a percentage. That's about as much as I need these days.
After reading an article about the future of the desktop, I tried removing the panel entirely and putting all of the functions - time, s-tasks, sys- tray, kmenu - on the desk as plasmoids, but, firstly, it was not functional, as I had to constantly rotate to the virtual desktop with those plasmoids, and secondly, having quite a number of plasmoids really does not make for an aesthetically pleasing desktop, as it looks like a messy jumble (I always hated shortcut icons on the desktop, and this appears much the same). If they were all standard sizes, it would be easier to arrange them to make it look classy.
I do resize them all so that they are either an identical size (much smaller than the default) or 50% of that size when it's practical to stack two.
Plasmoids have a limited value, primarily for system functions, but you don't see people showing off screenshots of their beautiful desktops since the advent of the plasmoid.
You obviously haven't come across http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=17916&hilit=%22screenshot+...; :-)
It's slow to load as it has a lot of screenshots. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Luckily, I have Intel graphics on both computers and don't have to disable anything to watch video. Intel rocks, these days, after a very rough 18 months that ended when I moved to f12α in late August.
I will probably go down that road next time I replace the laptop.
Firefox problems? Luckily, none here at all, but I use the desktop 99% of the time, so the laptop is just for the bedroom, and I rarely use a computer in bed, re: proper sleep hygiene ;-)
From time to time I get a runaway Firefox. More often than not it's nspluginviewer that is the culprit. I tried getting rid of that since I'd been told it wasn't necessary these days, but it got pulled back in with the next update. :-(
Anne
Anne Wilson wrote:
[I]t has a lot of screenshots.
I will look, as I am always looking for ideas to make my desktop look nicer and how to use the new features innovatively, yet still functionally.
nspluginviewer... wasn't necessary these days
I am sure you must mean nspluginwrapper, non? As I understand, it very much *is* necessary these days, more so than ever, if you want to have your plugins working properly within their selinux contexts. The seapplet gives an occasional warning about plugins trying to make the memory executable and such, but nspluginwrapper really should not be a problem, in my experience.
Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
I will look
I had noticed that both fedoraforum and kde-look had removed their screenshot sections, so this thread was interesting. I see that a lot of the shots date back into 2008, but some of the latter pages are for 2009, ie., somewhat current kde.
It seems that most have found a similar solution to mine: use plasmoids very, very sparingly on the desktop, as they create clutter and disorder and do not harmonize well or even interfere with the background, and reserve them mostly for the panel.
Anne Wilson wrote:
I know those concerns, only too well :-) This laptop is 4.5 years old, and wasn't state-of-the-art when I bought it. It has ATi Mobility Radeon X600 graphics , so it's little short of amazing that I can use desktop effects at all, but I carefully use only the minimum of effects, and temporarily disable them if watching video, for instance.
That thing is more than enough for desktop effects. Even the most basic Radeon 7000 should be sufficient.
Kevin Kofler
On Wednesday 28 October 2009 10:14:16 Kevin Kofler wrote:
Anne Wilson wrote:
I know those concerns, only too well :-) This laptop is 4.5 years old, and wasn't state-of-the-art when I bought it. It has ATi Mobility Radeon X600 graphics , so it's little short of amazing that I can use desktop effects at all, but I carefully use only the minimum of effects, and temporarily disable them if watching video, for instance.
That thing is more than enough for desktop effects. Even the most basic Radeon 7000 should be sufficient.
I'm not up on graphics cards specs - it's never been a priority until now :-) Really, the only things I particularly like are translucency and the dimming of inactive windows (which stops me from closing the wrong window by accident, as I've done too often in KDE4). I could be wrong, but I think the translucency takes a fair bit of oomph, so I keep effects down to the ones I need.
The thing that made the most difference, indeed changed desktop effects from almost unusable into working quite well, was setting the fading duration right down, as documented in http://userbase.kde.org/GPU- Performance#Some_things_that_may_speed_up_any_card.27s_performance
Anne
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Anne Wilson wrote:
On Wednesday 28 October 2009 10:14:16 Kevin Kofler wrote:
Anne Wilson wrote:
I know those concerns, only too well :-) This laptop is 4.5 years old, and wasn't state-of-the-art when I bought it. It has ATi Mobility Radeon X600 graphics , so it's little short of amazing that I can use desktop effects at all, but I carefully use only the minimum of effects, and temporarily disable them if watching video, for instance.
That thing is more than enough for desktop effects. Even the most basic Radeon 7000 should be sufficient.
I'm not up on graphics cards specs - it's never been a priority until now :-) Really, the only things I particularly like are translucency and the dimming of inactive windows (which stops me from closing the wrong window by accident, as I've done too often in KDE4). I could be wrong, but I think the translucency takes a fair bit of oomph, so I keep effects down to the ones I need.
It does. The netbook (with accel) does them fine. The 2.0GHz Core2Duo has noticeable lag with translucency (Normal animation speed, fine with instant). The 3.0GHz Core2Duo machine was able to do it well enough that there's not much difference.
The thing that made the most difference, indeed changed desktop effects from almost unusable into working quite well, was setting the fading duration right down, as documented in http://userbase.kde.org/GPU- Performance#Some_things_that_may_speed_up_any_card.27s_performance
Definitely improves XRender as well.
Anne
- --Ben
Kevin Kofler wrote:
Looks like it's adding an unwanted additional activity whenever it feels like it?
I almost think that if I zoom in/out in a session, then I get an extra? But then I should have more than 7 since I installed.
I will monitor it for a couple of days, and if I end up with too many, then maybe I will have to disable the separate activity on each desktop, although it is useful to me.
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Anne Wilson -
Ben Boeckel -
Kevin Kofler -
Petrus de Calguarium