Panther Impressions

I finally get a chance to install Panther separately on a external Firewire disk . It is a 6.4GB hard disk previously hosted in punknix (my Debian server). I run Panther CD on Jaguar, it will reboot and then goes into installation process.

This is my first impressions about Panther, I am telling what I feel:

• In general, it is faster than Jaguar, more responsive, even on the same hardward with Firewire disk.
• Booting up and shutting down Panther is faster than Jaguar.
• DVD Player 4.0 has a new face. The advancement is far better than 2.x -> 3.0.
• New Finder is faster, but also needs more improvement. Although I don't like Windows Explorer, but I dislike it more.
• Panther is huge. Installing Panther (Disc 1 -3 and Xcode) causing me around 4.5GB, with only 1.9GB left on my 6.4GB Firewire disk. How I can upgrade Panther on my 10GB HD equipped iBook G3/500? May be it's time to upgrade harddisk...
• CPU Monitor is replaced by Activity Monitor. CPU bar has no great difference. In addition, it can show running processes.
• Safari now turns to 1.1 (v110), against 1.0 (v85) in Jaguar. So far, I can't see
  any significant enhancement, I will need more time to find it out.

So far, as I am not upgrading from 10.2 but dual booting 10.3, I didn't use it very often. Many 10.3 features such as Expose and Fast User Switching were not explored. I will test it and report later. BTW,
Ars Technica has a very comprehensive

review of Panther. It's technical but worth reading.