Okay, updated results (cleared all the caches and restarted shell/terminal between runs): "time command ls -lR --color=always": 12.31 secs "time command exa -

Okay, updated results (cleared all the caches and restarted shell/terminal between runs): "time command ls -lR --color=always": 12.31 secs "time command exa -lgR --icons": 11.32 secs Still, no performance difference on my system. In fact exa seems to be slightly faster (I did the test multiple times and it was alwasy ~1 second faster). This is on a physical HDD and I could hear it churning equivalently on both of the runs.