Ubuntu 12.04 LTS - Benchmarking All The Linux File-Systems

When running Linux file-system benchmarks at Phoronix it is most often a comparison of EXT4 vs. Btrfs, since they are the "hot" Linux file-systems at the moment. Sometimes others like ZFS, Reiser4, and XFS also join the party. In this article is a look at all of the Linux file-systems with install-time support under the forthcoming Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. When carrying out clean installations each time with changing out the root file-system and using the default mount options, ReiserFS, JFS, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs, and XFS are all being compared in this article.

The seven file-systems that Ubuntu 12.04 LTS supports for the root file-system were all tested from the same Intel system to see what the Linux desktop file-system performance is like. A clean installation was done each time using the same 12.04 Precise snapshot and the file-system mount options were maintained at their stock settings each time. The default mount options for each of the file-systems are shown with the system table below, using the enhanced reporting support.

The system being used was an HP EliteBook with an Intel Core i5 "Sandy Bridge" CPU and a 160GB Intel X25 SSD. A variety of benchmarks was run using the Phoronix Test Suite with OpenBenchmarking.org. Before beginning with those results, the boot time under each file-system was also tracked using Bootchart. First up are those Bootchart results.