Video summary
Matija Šuklje opens his presentation by addressing the significant gap between the powerful capabilities of KDE Activities and their widespread understanding among users. He notes that while many attendees have heard of the feature, very few can actually explain or effectively utilize it, leading to a situation where its potential remains hidden much like a snake hiding its legs. The core problem he identifies is that Activities are often confused with virtual desktops; whereas virtual desktops merely extend a single workspace, Activities represent distinct contexts or "desks" entirely suited for different tasks, such as separating cooking from woodworking. This distinction allows users to maintain separate environments where specific tools and data are relevant only to the current context, preventing cross-contamination between personal and professional workflows.
The speaker illustrates the depth of this contextual separation by explaining how KDE stores file access history and application usage specifically per activity rather than globally. When a user switches between activities, the system remembers exactly what was opened and used within that specific session, effectively recreating the visual memory of a project even if it has been dormant for a long time. To demonstrate the practical utility of this feature, Šuklje shares how he created a custom Firefox wrapper that maintains separate browser profiles, history, and settings for each activity. Similarly, he highlights how email clients like KMail can be configured to hide specific accounts when switching away from a work-related activity, ensuring that personal emails do not clutter the professional workspace and vice versa.
Despite these advanced features, Šuklje argues that the community is underutilizing Activities simply because they are not well explained or documented. He proposes a more intuitive approach where activities are created dynamically based on user behavior rather than being set up in advance; users would perform their tasks and then save the current state as an activity when they need a clean slate for a new task. This method would automatically name the activity based on the work being done, making it easier to resume projects later. He concludes by emphasizing that Activities can create necessary limits and contexts without relying solely on AI, suggesting future improvements like per-activity clipboards that preserve the entire context of a session rather than just individual files.
Read the full video transcript
Hello. Okay.
Um I don't have any slides, so you can
look at the conky.
Um
So, what I'm trying to sell you on is
activities. Um you probably heard
activities more often today and
yesterday than I thought you would.
Honestly, um so that that that sounds
cool to me. But, um I just wanted to do
a real quick um statistics like who has
heard of activities before this
uh academy? Hands up.
Okay, keep your hands up if you've
actually used or are using activities.
I still am. Um okay, keep your hands up
if you can actually explain activities
to other people.
All right. So, there's our problem,
right? Um activities are super powerful.
I mean, maybe not super powerful, but
pretty pretty damn powerful. Um but
they're never explained. They're not
explained badly. They're just not
explained. And they're like not even not
displayed, they're not explained,
they're not even displayed. They're we
kind of hide them like
I mean, in Slovenian we have a saying
saying you you you're hiding something
like the snake is hiding its legs.
So, I think that's what we're doing with
activities. Um so,
the people who kept their hands up like
me, I mean, we're the people who
actually actively looked for this and
tried to figure out how it works.
Um
as we said like there there is something
has to be something about activities
because today and yeah and yesterday we
heard about them and being like
potential groundwork for a lot of cool
stuff.
And
one thing one problem with activities
was always that it was always confusing
like whether it's confusing whether are
there like virtual desktops? Are they
not like virtual desktops?
Should they replace virtual desktops?
And then there's
Are we going to get rid of virtual
desktop? But then what people will be
confused. Will they be confused? Will
they not be confused?
So who are we going to piss off?
Probably going to piss off somebody.
So we just didn't do anything about them
and just
brushed them under the carpet.
The way I understand activities and this
is not going to be a perfect example.
But the way I understand is like
virtual desktops for me are like real
estate on a desk. So I have like desk
and then I have more of a desk and then
I have even more of a desk
depending on what I need.
But the virtual desktop
that's a virtual desktop. So it's just
like extending the desk. But an activity
to me is switching desks. So you have
your kitchen counter where you do the
cooking stuff. And then you have your
workbench where you do your work. And
then you have your woodworking bench
where you do woodworking. You wouldn't
cook at the woodworking bench and you
wouldn't do woodworking at your
workbench. I think we agree about about
that. They're like completely different
contexts.
And
I think like activities are more like
that.
And
it's when I switch I have like two dozen
activities
at any point of time. Some of them are
like static like communication or
whatever.
Organization and stuff like that. But
some of them are like most of them are
like project based. So for me is like if
I have a project I haven't touched for a
long long time and I spin up the
activity again I see all the files. I
see the the specific background etc. It
just kicks off the visual memory again.
You just remember oh yeah I've worked on
this like one and a half year ago. It's
slowly coming back. Um
but I think there's a lot more to that
than that. Like things that already
exist in activities
are you can you probably if you use
you already figured out that you can
favorite you can select favorite apps
and favorite folders and favorite
files
and those get remembered by activity so
you can pin them to specific activities
which is kind of cool
but what people usually don't
don't don't remember because again we
come to the point it's not explained at
all
is that KDE stores
file access history and application
history per activity
you don't notice it if you don't use
activities because it's all in the same
activity you don't notice it but if
you're switching between activities
the work activity will remember the your
work items that you opened but my for
example the FLA activity which I'm
recently using again is has the history
of the files and um
and applications that I opened for that
specific task which is pretty freaking
cool so like if we can contact we have
the context but if we can you know bring
this to the user
and make it useful it's sounds like kind
of similar to what Scott was explaining
yesterday so there's like we have the
building blocks we just have to make
them work
um
so I I'm I'm I'm using activity so much
I actually made a wrapper for Firefox
that's called activity where aware
Firefox so I even have like separate
profiles for Firefox per activity so my
browser and and the history of the
browser and and the settings are
different depending on which context I'm
using it
so it's doable
um one thing that is also interesting is
like KMail has a similar issue similar
thing you can it's not great, but you
can or you can if you have like
different email accounts in KMail, you
can
dedicate specific
accounts to specific activities, which
again, I mean, maybe after you're
started working, you don't want to see
the work account anymore. So, when you
switch from the work activity which have
to whichever other activity you have,
you will just not see your work email.
Brilliant.
Um
you used to be able to suspend them,
which I miss because I have a really
great idea how to use that.
So,
my idea with like this is the problem
with the the activities is that
if we don't explain it to the people,
they're not going to use it. And my
personal idea, it's not something I'm
currently proposing that we actually try
to pull off, but just like
as a spark,
um
one idea could be that instead of
creating activities up front, instead of
that, we just let people do stuff.
And then once they finish doing the
stuff, then they say, "I want to do work
on some other stuff." And then when they
say, "I want a clean slate."
They save that as an activity, and then
they it automatically opens a new
activity. So, that also help means that
when you save it as an activity, you can
then name what you were working on. So,
you can remember when you continue
working on lay on it later on.
Um
So, I think like we
even outside of the whole AI or whatever
things, I think we can do a lot with
how activities create context and create
limits. So, for example, like limiting
you from your from your work account,
for example, when you're not at work.
Um and coming back to Scott's suggestion
like the clipboard idea, like the clip
pad.
Um,
he suggested it to be per file, but I
think like we can very easily create
that per activity and it should be
pretty damn close or maybe even better
because if you're
have the whole context
then you don't have to
have it to a specific file. You have it
to
whatever you defined as
your work at the time was.
Um,
so all I have on this topic is like
they're pretty cool
and we're heavily under using them
because nobody knows about them and I
want to change that part. So, I have a
buff on this on Tuesday morning
and you're very welcome to join that and
I hope we can finally get something done
with activities because I think they're
really cool.
Um, I will also piggyback on Harold's
talk because if you have any questions
on
the reuse process or reuse after process
thing and licensing all the stuff or
licenses or the FLA, I happen to be a
lawyer who specializes in licensing. I
have a buff on Tuesday after lunch
um, in the same room, so in room number
two.
Um, welcome to both of them. That's it
from me. Thank you.