Mageia 2 is a disaster compared to Mageia 1 in Virtualbox

[Cracker42]

I'm trying my best to get Mageia 2 to run in VB 4.1.18r78361 (as of 8-16-12) and running into all kinds of problems.
I installed Mageia 1 last year and it runs smoothly today with the latest VB extensions.
I'm running a Windows 7 Pro 64-bit host on an Intel i5-660 with 8 GB of ram, Radeon 6870 gpu.

I have installed the 64-bit Mageia 2 ok, the VB extensions, and the default desktop looks ok. I ran the OS updates and all is good. I can install a different X11 mouse pointer so it's larger on my 1920 x 1080 HD monitor. Even the Compiz special effects such as wobbly windows works. So far so good until...

First thing I had to fix was there was no sound because I have an Intel chipset with Realtek HD audio. I finally found a working solution to that so I do have sound. The next thing I noticed wrong is in the Application Launcher menu. It comes up ok but the sub-menus either don't show properly or I have to left click to get them to appear. Sometimes I have to click multiple times on the Application Launcher button to get the main menu to appear. It is very erratic. I've also tried to go into Workspace Appearance in System Settings to install a different desktop theme. I can install a theme but it never takes effect. I go to the Details tab and manually change the different theme items and I do get Mageia 2 to show a "(customized) " theme choice but applying that does nothing. Shutting down and restarting after changing the theme doesn't make it work. I am also having trouble with some websites with a vertical scroll bar that doesn't work in both Firefox 10 and Opera 12.01.

I went back to Mageia 1 and played around with it's themes and as soon as I click apply I can see the change take effect immediately so I know it's not my Linux technical ignorance that's to blame. I'm not a Linux noob either as I have used and run Mint Linux 11 and 12 Gnome, and now Mint 13 Cinnamon and have been able to get the large aero mouse pointer to work on Gnome.

I haven't tried to install Mageia 2 on a separate partition yet as a 3rd bootable OS (I currently have XP and Win 7) to see if KDE 4.8.2 won't play nice with Virtualbox. I've run Mageia 1 enough to know that it still runs smoothly with no visual problems.

Does anyone have a normal Mageia 2 running in Virtualbox?
Am I missing any key part of the KDE 4.8.2 that I need to manually install for it to work in VB?
Is KDE 4.8.2 being borked by Virtualbox?

I do like the visual and other improvements that Mageia 2 has but until I can fix the numerous glitches I just can't use it this way.
Any and all help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[doktor5000]

So the menu is a bit glitchy, and you got some scrollbar weirdnesses, and you call that a disaster? I don't want to know what you'd call a real problem then :/
Apart from that, you didn't even mention which media you used to install, e.g. LiveCD or FreeDVD ...

[Cracker42]

I used the DVD ISO to install the 64-bit Mageia 2 KDE 4.8.2 edition. Why should that make any difference?
Now that KDE 4.9 is out does anyone know a way to upgrade? If yes then please give a how to.

Since I never had any of these problems using Mageia 1 I was expecting a similar experience with Mageia 2. Since it's been out a few month now I was hoping that most of the bugs had been worked out. My bad.

[Cracker42]

I didn't notice until now that Mageia 2 is code named Cauldron. I will need to be extra careful so I don't burn myself using it.

[tom_]

however Cauldron is the name of the development release,
the stable versions are named Mageia N

[alf]

btw. in Cauldron KDE is at 4.9

[bradm0]

As a point of clarification, IMHO, I don't think the problem is with Mageia 2. It's with Gnome 3. Searching many of the problems I encountered after my upgrade last night I found Gnome users of other distros had the same issues. Most of them revolved around desktop customization. My personal resolution was to install and use the xfce desktop environment. It was easier to customize than the Gnome or Gnome Classic environment. This is one of the cases where in open source development the user community is at the mercy of the development community to take items into a new direction "because they know best". It's sorta like politics. When things are going your way you're fine, but when they aren't going your way or when they start to get in your face (kinda like changing your UI in a less than well received manner) then it things start to come unhinged. In any operating system I personally look for two characteristics:
1. Stability
2. User interface

On the stability front, Mageia 2 meets and exceeds my expectations so I'll continue to use it. On the user interface front, and this is not specific to Mageia based on my research, the Gnome UI is too "wonky" even trying to use the Gnome Classic environment so I made the personal decision to try xfce. I'm able to customize the environment much more easily than I could with Gnome 3/Gnome Classic. I just wanted to add my two cents to this thread. I found it last night when I was working through my post-upgrade customizations. I saw some of the responses and felt that some people were trying to down play the issues. In my opinion the issues are real and, based on my post-upgrade experience, are centered mainly in the Gnome 3 UI. But if you experiment you can either get really good at manually editing menus or try some different UIs to find one that works for you.

[doktor5000]

FWIW, you may also want to try razor-qt, rather minimalistic but offers all basic components for a desktop environment
http://razor-qt.org/screenshots/
The package you need to install is called razorqt (without the hyphen)