macOS 10.13 High Sierra vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance

First up are a few disk / I/O benchmarks.

SQLite is very common to both macOS and Linux desktop applications from Firefox to other applications relying upon this as an embedded database library. SQLite is much faster with macOS 10.13 than 10.12.6. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS was about the same speed as macOS 10.12.6 on HFS+, but easily loses out to macOS 10.13 on APFS. Ubuntu 17.10 sadly regresses in performance for this simple SQLite benchmark.

In the Java-written BlogBench disk benchmark, Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS is about the same speed as macOS High Siera but Ubuntu 17.10 is doing better and comes out ahead of macOS 10.13.

With the CompileBench disk benchmark, Ubuntu has a small lead over macOS 10.13, which in turn is much faster than macOS 10.12.6 on its old HFS+ file-system.

Especially with the initial create process, Ubuntu on EXT4 is much faster than macOS.

APFS appears tuned for SQLite-like workloads given Apple's focus on the desktop and mobile devices, but in the other disk benchmarks, Ubuntu on the proven EXT4 file-system was the leader.