I installed RC1 on my Linux-friendly Celeron desktop. No major issues to report. I had to do a hosted install from my VL5.9 partition on this computer because when I installed from a CD, there was a brief mention of an I/O error although the installation went through to completion. (I did a text install from the CD--sorry, I didn't have time to test the GUI installer this time, which I'll never use when Final comes out). It turned out that the first installation (with the I/O error) was messed up big time. I think the CD I used to burn the ISO was of questionable quality. Anyway, I used the hosted install for my second, successful, try.
No major problems. The screens that were too small to show their text (VASMCC, etc.) have been a more reasonable size. I like the default wallpaper. I'm not happy with the clock on the XFce panel because I don't know what modification to use to get rid of those seconds--very annoying, I want just hour and minutes. I'll have to load up beta 2 so I can see what I used there (after reading man pages and experimenting). Some less geeky way of modifying the clock would be welcome. I tried to put back the Orage Clock with its easy-to-change settings but it doesn't display in the panel.
I installed Inkscape from the repos with Gslapt. Still has three missing dependencies, which I copied from my beta 2 to get it working. Sound is fine. I installed Amarok, which I prefer for playing music. No network problems (wired network) and I set up my nfs network easily.
VASMCC from the panel seems to be erratic. That is, sometimes it starts, sometimes I get a delay and a bit of disk activity but VASM never appears. VASM from the desktop icon seems okay. I rarely use the desktop menu to start applications I use often, so I can't say whether it works okay for me.
Would that all computers were as Linux-friendly as this one! This being the holiday season, I don't have time to try RC1 on my other computers.
--GrannyGeek