All test performed on tmpfs, /tmp/a mounted on /tmp/b. The untar test uses https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.0.tar.gz . The archive is placed on tmpfs as well. WRITE: dd if=/dev/zero of=zero bs=128K count=2000 UNTAR: time tar xzf ../linux-3.0.tar.gz MD5: time md5sum --quiet -c linux-3.0.md5sums LS: time ls -lR linux-3.0 > /dev/null RM: time rm -Rf linux-3.0 (or just run benchmark.bash) VERSION WRITE UNTAR MD5 LS RM v0.4 48 1.5 5 v0.5-rc1 56 7 19 v0.5-rc1-1 54 4.1 9 v0.5-rc1-2 45 1.7 3.4 v0.6 47 1.8 4.3 v0.7 43 1.7 4.3 v0.7.2 26 1.8 4.3 v0.8 23 1.8 4.3 v0.9-rc2 94 24 1.8 4.5 v0.9 94 24 1.8 4.5 v0.11 104 22 1.7 4.5 v1.1 104 20 1.5 3.4 (go1.7.1) v1.1.1-34 112 22 1.5 3.6 (go1.7.3) v1.2.1-33 112 21 12 1.6 4.4 (go1.8) v1.2.1-33 -serialize_reads 116 21 39 1.5 4.4 v1.3-27 113 20 11 1.4 4.2 v1.3-53-gf44902a 119 19 12 1.6 4.1 Results for EncFS for comparison (benchmark.bash -encfs): VERSION WRITE UNTAR MD5 LS RM encfs v1.9.1 95 20 8 2.8 3.8