Beginning with the Apache benchmark we see a nice spike in performance between Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10, which is attributed to Canonical switching the file-system default between Jaunty and Karmic from EXT3 to EXT4. However, in succeeding kernel releases as EXT4 has matured and the data integrity further refined, the performance has receded. There was a small drop in disk performance between Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04.1, but between this past Long-Term Support release and Ubuntu 10.10 there is quite a drop. The EXT4 Apache performance in Ubuntu 10.10 is about at the same speed as it was found in Ubuntu 9.04 when it was on the EXT3 file-system.
The PostgreSQL performance is a similar story to that of our Apache test profile where the transactions per second improved greatly during the switch to EXT4, but with PostgreSQL the numbers continued to improve between 9.10 and 10.04.1, but has now fallen back with Ubuntu Maverick. At least with PostgreSQL the performance in Ubuntu 10.10 on EXT4 is still well ahead of the older EXT3 levels.
It is the same story with PostMark due to the EXT3 and EXT4 changes.
FS-Mark is our last disk test, with it sharing a similar story over the past six Ubuntu releases to our other benchmarks.