I’ve been experimenting with the beta release of Fedora 19. I’m using the xfce spin live cd. It includes Xfce 4.10 and uses LightDM so not much different to 18. There are a few noticeable changes though. The installer, anaconda, has improved a bit since its introduction with Fedora 18 but there is still some room for improvement. It includes slides so you don’t get bored watching it install however at least one slide I saw was for applications that aren’t part of the Xfce spin. Could be confusing for someone who isn’t familiar with Fedora.
Another change is behind the scenes but it may explain some improvement I saw. The yum-presto plugin has been removed and the functionality is now part of yum. Was this why the updates seemed to faster than previous versions? Yum-presto was a great addition when it first appeared as it allows only the changes to be downloaded rather than the entire package.
Altogether my initial impression of 19 is very good. I think it is a better release than 18 but my testing is only based on the Xfce spin running in a VM so other environments may not be as good. Still worth a try but remember it is beta so I wouldn’t use it on my main machine yet although so far it has been quite stable for me.
Techodyssey 
Thanks Steve, I’ve heard good things about Mate but haven’t tried it (yet!).