KDE 5: How To Have Different Wallpapers, and Widgets, On Different Desktops

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desertcat
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KDE 5: How To Have Different Wallpapers, and Widgets, On Different Desktops

Post by desertcat » 2021/07/17 21:15:54

Of all the things I HATE about KDE 5 it has been the inability to have different Virtual Desktops, each with its own Wallpaper and set of Widgets. In KDE 4.14 it was EASY: You went to System Settings => Workspace Behavior => Virtual Desktops => Check a box that says,"Different Widgets for Each Desktop". Close. Super Clean; Super EASY. Then came KDE 5. Instead of building on KDE 4, they tore things down to the ground and started over, in effect re-inventing the wheel.

One of the things that a lot of Users have demanded of KDE is to add back the ability to have different Virtual Desktops with Different Wallpapers and Different Widgets. These demands have fallen on deaf ears.

With the advent of the impending departure from CentOS in the not too distant future, and a NEW workstation that needs an OS, I have resumed my role as "Official Test Guinea Pig" both for my buddy and me.

The top two candidates at this point are Rocky Linux 8.4 Stable, a bug-for-bug copy of RHEL 8.4 and the twin of CentOS 8.4, which will take over CentOS's role when RHEL 9.x is released and CentOS is no more.

The second is openSUSE 15.3. The prime attraction here is that openSUSE runs KDE out of the box while RHEL, CentOS, and Rocky Linux run GNOME out of the box.

Given that my buddy and I are KDE users I started my experimentions with openSUSE 15.3 first. The BAD thing about anything that runs KDE -- including openSUSE -- is you are stuck with the cursed KDE 5.x. Since I was going to be stuck with the cursed KDE 5.x I decided to see if I could reverse engineer the concept of KDE 4. I went back to KDE 4.6, with its very PRIMITIVE Virtual Desktops, Wallpapers, and Widget concept, that was based on Activities and Containers. Think of a Box into which you throw junk, and for good measure, you can throw on pretty designs and labels. You can have several "unique boxes" which you can store in some place like a garage, only here that "garage" would be a single Virtual Desktop. Most people HATE "Activities" and "Containers", but it seems KDE is determined to force feed this horrible concept down the throats of "Users". They have made a bad thing worse by creating something called "Docker" -- don't ask me what IT does, as I don't know and will probably NEVER use it.

With this PRIMITIVE concept of "Activities" and "Containers" -- Boxes and Junk -- in mind I set out out to create a Virtual Desktop that held a single LARGE "Container" that held a SINGLE "Activity" that could be associated with a SINGLE Virtual Desktop. For my Proof of Concept Test I was successful in actually creating 4 different "Activities" each with a separate Wallpaper, populated with its own set of Widgets. These 4 "Activities" however all showed up on a SINGLE Virtual Desktop. I was able to switch between the 4 "Activities" by clicking on the "Activity" but was unable to associate the "Activity" with any given Virtual Desktop. This SUCKED! But it was better than nothing. Then I came across the following YouTube Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCMfweOXDWo

This the FIRST and ONLY video to my knowledge that tells you HOW TO accomplish having Different Wallpapers and Widgets associated with a SINGLE Virtual Desktop. Only now they have nuked the Virtual Desktop, and replaced the Virtual Desktop with a SINGLE "Activity". Thus instead of having 4 different Virtual Desktops each with its own Wallpaper and Widgets, you now have 4 Single "Activities" each with its own Wallpaper and associated Widgets. The secret seems to be something called the "ACTIVITY PAGER" that is mentioned at 2:14 seconds into the video. Go looking for the "ACTIVITY PAGER" and you'll likely not find it. Where you WILL FIND IT is by clicking on ADD WIDGETS on the PANEL. You will then be faced with 3 things called "Activity" 1) Activities. This shows the "Activity Manager" 2) Activity Bar. This is a TAB bar that allows you to SWITCH ACTIVITIES 3) Activity Pager which allows you to switch BETWEEN Activities. I have no idea HOW I created this but in all likely hood it was some combination of one or all of these processes (remember I reversed engineered the KDE 4.6 process but got to the same place).

The above process is, as I said, EXTREMELY PRIMITIVE compared to Virtual Desktops, but KDE 5 is determined to force feed you their concept of "Activities" and "Containers". This is a HIGHLY CONVOLUTED process compared to KDE 4.14, however it does work.

NOTES: Will this process work with all forms of KDE 5.x ? The current version of KDE 5 I am now experimenting with is KDE Plasma 5.18.6. When I switch back to testing CentOS 8.4 which I have already loaded KDE on; and then laterRocky Linux 8.4 stable which so far does NOT have KDE loaded on it, I will attempt to use this process to see if I can get the same reproducible results.

Hope this helps.

D'Cat

MartinR
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Re: KDE 5: How To Have Different Wallpapers, and Widgets, On Different Desktops

Post by MartinR » 2021/07/17 21:22:39

The top two candidates at this point are Rocky Linux 8.4 Stable, a bug-for-bug copy of RHEL 8.4 and the twin of CentOS 8.4, which will take over CentOS's role when RHEL 9.x is released and CentOS is no more.
Don't forget Alma Linux: https://almalinux.org/

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jlehtone
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Re: KDE 5: How To Have Different Wallpapers, and Widgets, On Different Desktops

Post by jlehtone » 2021/07/17 21:28:49

desertcat wrote:
2021/07/17 21:15:54
Then came KDE 5. Instead of building on KDE 4, they tore things down to the ground and started over, in effect re-inventing the wheel.

KDE 5 is determined to force feed you their concept
Isn't that what they say about GNOME 2 and 3, not to mention Apple and MS?

dorcsssc
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Re: KDE 5: How To Have Different Wallpapers, and Widgets, On Different Desktops

Post by dorcsssc » 2021/12/28 12:13:07

Sadly, your gripe is 100% legitimate. I also used this feature, along with the two-color horizontal blend (something else that's become hard-to-find), to achieve the effect of creating a giant multi-window rainbow which I could use to always remain aware of which desktop I was on from the background alone. I was surprised that this rather obvious innovation wasn't more popular, especially given the fad at the time of the various 'cube' desktop switchers.

The two-color blend background approach gave me quite a sophisticated multi-desktop layout that took even less memory than conventional image-based wallpaper (since the backgrounds were easily re-generated with every desktop switch). This let me do it even on very challenged machines such as a high-end '386 w/ ISA bus SVGA video cards.

Can this problem not be solved simply by finding an old KDE 4 mirror site and re-building the sources? Are there not old KDE mirrors around somewhere that will restore the choices we used to have?

I do not understand why the user community has been ignored here: somebody has clearly forgotten that we all left Windows because we wanted CHOICES. I for one despise dictatorships, especially when the dictator's choices are poor.

desertcat
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Joined: 2014/08/07 02:17:29
Location: Tucson, AZ

Re: KDE 5: How To Have Different Wallpapers, and Widgets, On Different Desktops

Post by desertcat » 2021/12/28 16:29:53

I solved the problem but you will need to jump through hoops. Will post more later.

D'Cat

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