I've been wondering about this for years ... (Score 1)

Linux IO has always seemed slow to me.

On large file ops, the update daemon starts pegging the CPU and the writes steadily slow down to a trickle. Example ... I backup my MP3 collection (about 5 gigs) over 100Mb every so often onto my gateway box, running Linux with ext2 file systems. The transfer takes at least twice as long on Linux as it used to when FreeBSD was running on it, not to mention the Linux box becomes pretty much unusable during this period.

Do the journaling FSs, e.g. ReiserFS, make the update daemon, and so this problem, go away? Will tweaking update help?