Don't know if this helps, but I had terrible kernal panics on my Jaguar/1GHz SD Tibook (stupid USB ADSL modem! - NEVER buy one!) that couldn't be fixed by removing the offending drivers (I think I'd had so many, I'd corrupted my filesystem or something). So, when Panther first came out I jumped and did a clean install. On first attempt though, I forgot my machine was still plugged into an ethernet network during the install. The result was crazy. Much to my shock and disappointment, the machine was kernal panicing almost as bad as Jaguar was (about every 20mins)..on a clean install!
Tried another clean install, this time making sure the machine was plugged into NOTHING (except power) and have not seen another kernal panic or even an 'unexpectedly quit' message ever since! : )
Another guy at work had problems with installing programs after a clean install of Panther..was fixed on second go...
Strangely enough, it seems that with installing Panther, the 'if at first you don't suceed, try again' seems to actually work!