How can I define a start-up activity in Kubuntu?

Question

I use Activities in KDE to organize my kubuntu-desktops separately by their use, but unfortunately my media activity is the start-up by default. How can I customize that?

Infos: Kubuntu 14.04 Kernel: 3.13.0-38-generic (64bit) KDELibs: 4.13.3 QTversion: 4.8.6

Thanks for help, if you need any more information about my system, please let me know.

Answer 1

Activity manager configuration settings

The ~/.kde/share/config/activitymanagerrc has the information of the available, running and the current activity.

At here the KDE is slow to update the activitymanagerrc. If I change the activity and log out the current activity is still the old one. The next log in the KDE is starting to the old activity.

Workarounds:

• stop the other activities before the log out - a bit silly ;)
• use the kwriteconfig to set/update the current activity.

The kwriteconfig help file:

:~$ kwriteconfig --help
Usage: kwriteconfig [Qt-options] [KDE-options] [options] value 

Write KConfig entries - for use in shell scripts

Generic options:

  --help                    Show help about options

  --help-qt                 Show Qt specific options

  --help-kde                Show KDE specific options

  --help-all                Show all options

  --author                  Show author information

  -v, --version             Show version information

  --license                 Show license information

  --                        End of options

Options:
  --file <file>             Use <file> instead of global config

  --group <group>           Group to look in. Use repeatedly for nested groups. [KDE]

  --key <key>               Key to look for

  --type <type>             Type of variable. Use "bool" for a boolean, otherwise it is treated as a string


Arguments:

  value                     The value to write. Mandatory, on a shell use '' for empty

At here the activitymanagerrc has:

[activities]
43ef904a-bf13-4770-87b4-3804059f073f=Media
5dfa29b8-765b-4860-ad56-3b0e257e8923=Desktop
afcf7ba3-4aa7-433f-abad-14db4f31b44b=New Activity

[activities-icons]
43ef904a-bf13-4770-87b4-3804059f073f=

[main]
currentActivity=43ef904a-bf13-4770-87b4-3804059f073f
runningActivities=43ef904a-bf13-4770-87b4-3804059f073f,5dfa29b8-765b-4860-ad56-3b0e257e8923

So the command:

kwriteconfig --file activitymanagerrc --group main --key currentActivity -type string 5dfa29b8-765b-4860-ad56-3b0e257e8923

will set the current activity as the Desktop.

The kwriteconfig command can be added to the KDE System settings > Startup and Shutdown > Autostart