All test performed on a Pentium G630 (Dual-core Sandy Bridge, no AES-NI). The working directory is on tmpfs. 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 READ UNTAR MD5 LS RM ENV CHANGE? 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 -serialize_reads 116 21 39 1.5 4.4 (v1.2.1-33 with -serialize_reads) v1.3-27 113 20 11 1.4 4.2 v1.3-53-gf44902a 119 19 12 1.6 4.1 v1.3-64-g80516ed 123 19 11 1.3 4.2 v1.3-67-g9837cb0 125 19 11 1.4 4.2 go1.8.3, Linux 4.10 v1.3-69-ge52594d 145 19.0 11.6 1.4 4.1 v1.4-1-g3c6fe98 154 17.2 11.7 1.4 4.1 v1.4-5-g0cc6f53 182 144 16.7 11.1 1.3 3.3 v1.4-8-g80676c6 178 148 16.1 11.0 1.3 4.0 v1.4-14-g9f4bd76 182 286 15.4 7.5 1.3 4.1 v1.4-45-gd5671b7 183 282 14.9 7.3 1.1 2.9 v1.4-45-gd5671b7 252 285 15.5 7.2 1.1 2.9 go1.8.3, Linux 4.11 v1.4.1 253 285 16.0 7.4 1.3 3.0 go1.9, Linux 4.12.5 v1.4.1-6-g276567e 258 289 16.1 7.5 1.3 3.0 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