Virtual desktops vs Activities

[mirto]

Hi all,
I’m looking for documentation, information or experiences comparing Virtual Desktops and Activities.
Which is more actively maintained?
What are pros and cons when needing to save a nine open application session?
I’m using an X11 session; wayland offers something more?
Any other hint?

BTW
I’m using Plasma with a 4K monitor and a FullHD TV set.
My machine is a full cpu/gpu AMD.
I update Manjaro everytime a new update appears.

[Tomek]

They aren’t alternativies, they are complementary. Virtual Desktops are like additional monitors while Activities are like profiles where you can configure different environments for work, gaming etc.

How do I use KDE Activities?

Maybe this will explain what it do and how to use: https://blog.hanschen.org/2009/11/17/how-do-you-use-activities/ KDE Activities aren’t about reopening programs. These are about set up your desktop and plasmoids and panels on it. Think about it as virtual desktop but more separated.

[scotty65]

@mirto

I’m using an X11 session; wayland offers something more?

Yes.

@mirto

I’m using Plasma with a 4K monitor and a FullHD TV set.
My machine is a full cpu/gpu AMD.

As you do not have an Nvidia card, your system should have no issues running Plasma Wayland. KDE recently split kwin_x11 from kwin_wayland. Future development will be focused on Plasma Wayland, while Plasma X11 will be maintained but receive no new features:

kwin_x11 and kwin_wayland split

Future of KWin/X11

KWin/X11 will be still maintained for the foreseeable future. But that maintenance work will boil down to fixing build errors, adapting to new KDE Frameworks and Plasma APIs, and backporting window-related fixes from KWin/Wayland. There are no plans to drop KWin/X11 in the Plasma 6 lifecycle, although it’s highly possible that it will happen in Plasma 7.

KWin/X11 won’t receive new features anymore; until recently, it received new features that had been developed against KWin/Wayland passively (because both lived in the same repository). However, it might be actually a good thing because the X11 session doesn’t receive that much testing nowadays.