I did my first Panther install last night. First thing I noticed, bootups are significantly faster, going from three or four times slower than my PC to probably 2x faster. Also, the Panther upgrade CDs I had required a previous OS X install… As the 2x800MHz system I was upgrading was running Gentoo, this presented a problem. I was about to break out the Jaguar CDs (tedium), but the Netboot servers that we (USC ISD) run came in supa-handy. Hoo-ray.
(Originally, this Quicksilver machine was running OS X server as our workgroup file server. This caused no end of problems, and I inherited it and threw Gentoo on it. Better, but Linux PPC definitely has some issues; I just got a replacement IBM x335 running Debian in our rack set up, using this machine now for editing while my 12″ PB is in the shop. Having 135GB of 10K SCSI-2 RAID-0 goodness is definitely good fun)