I've recently tried out SS 2.4 and have some problems:

I don't understand why it always has index.php appended in the end, it looks worse compared to before. Whenever I flush or enter the admin panel, I need domain.name/index.php/admin and domain.name/index.php?flush=all. Even with subpages there is the pesky index.php

is there a way to remove this?

And the admin panel seems to be stricter now, way stricter, it reminds me of vista. Every time I try to edit a page, I leave it for a few seconds and edit it again, it asks me to try and log in again to the admin panel. And it is still a bit slow to load which costs loads of time.

And whenever I flush the template cache and db, it asks me to log-in for access which is no problem, but after I do successfully log-in and see the changes, it does not redirect me to the home page but to the same log-in form again. It's no biggie really, but it's just a bit annoying.

think maybe u need the .htaccess file to rewrite the url somehow.
try edit the .htaccess file

### SILVERSTRIPE START ###
<Files *.ss>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Files>

<Files web.config>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</Files>

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule .* sapphire/main.php?url=%1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
</IfModule>
### SILVERSTRIPE END ###

Just have a go