One of the most important releases in a long time [LWN.net]

One of the most important releases in a long time

Posted Oct 15, 2012 22:51 UTC (Mon) by ingwa (subscriber, #71149)
Parent article: Plasma Active Three released

I'm probably a little biased, but to me this is one of the most important and impressive releases of free software in a long time. Tablets are getting to be the new prison where consumers are kept inside one ecosystem with no way to move to another platform with his/her data.

This release means that there is now a way to use tablets while keeping control of your own data. And they managed to make it beautiful and even come up with a new paradigm (activities) in the process. Kudos!

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Activities?

Posted Oct 19, 2012 0:18 UTC (Fri) by pynm0001 (guest, #18379) [Link]

Well that's just it. They're not "new", Activities have been a KDE feature since before the 4.0 release in Jan. 2008 (some months before the first Android phone was released in Oct. 2008).

Either way, my very limited understanding of the Android SDK when I reviewed it some months ago was that an activity was an implementation detail for a software developer, not a user-visible term in the Android UI.

Activities?

Posted Oct 19, 2012 7:42 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

I am no expert, but the Wikipedia says that Google published their Android platform on November 2007. The SDK was available then even if the first phones would not come out for almost a year. (Remember the "OpenHandsetAlliance" that appeared as a response to Apple's iPhone?)

So I understand that activities in KDE are an element of the UI, thanks. Intriguing. dtlin's post below and the link posted are a very good source.

Activities?

Posted Oct 19, 2012 23:05 UTC (Fri) by pynm0001 (guest, #18379) [Link]

You're right that the Android SDK was available early, just keep in mind Plasma was actively in development before the KDE 4.0 release as well. ;)

I'm too lazy to dig up links (and besides, doesn't really matter). Feels like the OpenHandsetAlliance was so long ago though, amazing how much has changed just in 4 years...

Activities?

Posted Oct 19, 2012 3:09 UTC (Fri) by dtlin (✭ supporter ✭, #36537) [Link]

They're not alike at all.

Plasma activities are like super-virtual desktops: they are a collection of desktop state, configuration, and windows.

Android is easier to explain by analogy. The whole system is a web browser and an activity is a specific web page. One program may have many activities, just as one host may have many web pages, but while you can navigate between them freely, you can only see one at once.