Practical uses for KDE Plasma Activities

Arranging Widgets

Plasma's widgets can be placed in the panel, but you can also place them on the desktop, where they are always open and readable at a glance. Desktop widgets include useful items such as the trash can, or, in the Plasma 5 releases, a full-screen menu. However, you probably want to view some widgets only occasionally, and too many widgets can get in the way and can be started accidentally.

One solution is to place all your desktop widgets on to a single Activity. The example in Figure 5 starts with hardware and system monitors on the two left-hand columns, such as RAM, disk usage, and CPU Activity. In the middle column, there are everyday utilities, such as a calculator and measurement conversion app, with a system update on the bottom. In the far right column, there is information that you might want when logging in for the first time during the day, such as a world clock, a weather app, and recent KDE news. By placing these utilities on their own Activity, you can take advantage of them without them getting in the way of your other computing.

Figure 5: Another use for an Activity is for displaying desktop widgets in an orderly fashion.

Note, though, that Figure 5 is taken from a machine with 32GB RAM. On smaller machines, a dozen widgets constantly polling hardware and system resources or connecting to online sources can easily slow a system to a crawl. In such cases, you need to be more selective.

Your Own Chromebook

As you probably know, Chromebooks are laptops that use online applications rather than local ones. Chromebooks have become popular because of their low price, and also because storing resources online is easier for those using several machines or collaborating with others.

You can create your own version of a Chromebook in an Activity that contains only URLs. The Activity can contain links to Google Docs and Google Calendar for general productivity, Remember The Milk for to-do lists, and Google Drive for file storage and sharing (Figure 6). If necessary, you can also add Activities customized to use local applications as well.