[ Some answers

Thank you to the people who responded to some of my questions!

I run NetBSD on two machines: a Raspberry Pi 3 and an i3. The slowdown
happened on both platforms starting a week or two ago. pkgin upgrade just
hung so I let it go and it timed out eventually. I tried a mirror closer to
home and the update of NetBSD 10 (710 packages) took an entire day to DL and
complete. I don't remember what all the packages were, but I guess they were
for the WMs I have installed.

I just ran the same command again a little while ago and it was much faster. I
guess it was just a temporary issue.

I've been using NetBSD for a year now or more, and I quite like it, thought I
couldn't tell you why exactly. This bit from the NetBSD guide had something to
do with it:

 1.4. NetBSD's target users
 
 The NetBSD site states that: "The NetBSD Project provides a freely available
 and redistributable system that professionals, hobbyists, and researchers can
 use in whatever manner they wish." It is also an ideal system if you want to
 learn Unix, ...

Also these two articles:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/10/netbsd_93/
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/30yo_netbsd_releases_v10/

Enjoy your day.