Notices

I'm pleased to announce the initial version of actman . (currently) It is a command line activity manager (a'la KDE).

This applications is now called Desktop Activity Manager.

actman is a status-menu plugin that saves and restores desktop activities (or desktop profiles). An activity is defined as whatever exists on the 4 desktops of fremantle.

EDIT: All things below this point still work, but you should just use the GUI instead.
EDIT: It is available in extras-testing.
EDIT: It is available in extras.
EDIT: It has a wiki page.

So, you can do:
Using the command line utility you can do:
and an activity named "main" will be created that will hold the current desktop configuration. Then you can do:
and you will create (and switch to) a new activity named "empty". All desktop widgets, bookmarks etc will disappear. Then you can do:
which will switch to activity "clean" and restore previous widgets (since it is a clone of "main"). You can then remove whatever you don't like. After that you will have three activities:

* main: The initial configuration
* empty: A completely empty desktop (to remind you how fast N900 is)
* clean: A stripped-down version of the "main" activity.

Of course you can have as many activities as you like with different set of desktop configurations for each. The background is also saved/restored.

Currently the autobuilder is down so you'll have to get it from here. Just save the script in your home directory and run:
You'll need to have bash installed for the script to work. It is just a shell script so it will be easy to review if you like.

I've tested it on my N900 and on the SDK and seems to work without any problems at all.

Typical use cases:

• Have a "car" activity with very few buttons to make it easier to call from the car.
• Have an "empty" or "clean" activity to use it when you want to conserve battery.
• Have a "games" activity to include links of games and a proper background.
• Have a "work" activity without personal things on the desktop (like the calendar).
• Have a "phonebook" activity with contacts on the desktop
• ... and many more

this is a cool app...just something I am looking for...I would like to be able to swap my widgets and homescreen but hate to...much thanks for this...maybe we can soon have a gui and put the option in the menu with all the other settings for easy retrieving...or an actual widget on your homescreen to allow fast switching...nice app....

Hey, great idea.

Just curious. If someone has set more than 4 desktops or less than 4, does the script still work?

See e.g.
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...144#post567144

IIRC you can modify your desktop count up to 9. Haven't tried myself yet though as I have no need for that.

I believe yes. Haven't tested that but it dumps and restores the whole related tree of gconf so it should work.

Awesome app. Maybe this will go very well with DCE wideget. (ie. create buttons for each different profile)
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=39177

great app! will try this out a.s.a.p.

could be a problem when booting the device as all DCE-widgets get executed when starting up.

This looks very cool. Could be used in conjunction with alarmed to do timed switching. ie at 8am switch to work profile (and switch tweakr profiles for sounds), then at 5pm switch back to personal profiles.

great script dude... just a question... I get a "permission denied" message when I try "./activity help" even if I do it under root... what am i doing wrong?

[Edit] Ok... I'll answer myself... I had tu put read and write permissions and execute the command under root. Works great man... now i'm going to set up desktop shortcuts to switch between desktops easily... THANXXX[Edit]

You don't need root permissions to do this. In fact, I strongly recommend NOT to run this as root. You only need to put this in your home directory and give it execute permission (chmod +x activity).

You're right... much better as user... done it... now i have 2 icons... one in the main profile which sets to car profile... and another in main profile that sets to car profile... work perfect... GREAT!!!