well, I've been running Panther 7b28 for a week or so now, and I must say that even being beta quality and relatively buggy, it's so vastly improved over 10.2.6 that I'm once again using OS X full time now.
it's obvious that quite a bit of work has been done to Quartz and the drivers for Rage 128, as OpenGL acceleration is now available for iTunes vizzes, which never was before. the entire UI is much faster, snappier, scrolling and resizing is GREATLY improved on my 600MHz iBook. don't expect QE to suddenly be enabled on your Rage 128 card, but expect hella improvement. they managed to get SOME kind of acceleration going
journaling is now the default option when you initialize your HD, which is pretty nice, considering the panther installer for some reason WIPED MY WHOLE DRIVE!!!!
so I'm happy that journaling is enabled. it really makes up for all my data being lost
I likes it so far!