There maybe some truth in some of the older threads. However, the then cloop and the then squashfs might be different now. For software/hardware, 6months or 1 year is already a big difference. So I am not too sure of their relevance in todays view.

Technical analysis might be useful. But unless it is subtantiated with real life data, otherwise it is academic. I dare say in order to see the significant and conclusive difference in terms of performance, one will have to carefully design experiments to observe them. Otherwise at a gross level, especially on today's hardware, it will be hard to notice any difference.

And for usage history, I put my bet on squashfs. You see them in almost all of the embedded linux devices today. These devices have much more stringent CPU and memory contraints than a typical notebook/desktop.