The future Currently pkg_add is fastest using scp: it uses the rsync trick. http 1.1 would make things faster. It supports byte-range so we can "guess" at what we need from a packing-list, and bring a package in slowly. pkgin frontend We don't need pkgin. Our pkg_add does everything pkgin does. But the pkgin UI is nice. It's just a question of writing it. more ldconfig sugar write a packing-list interface to common operations, stuff like @update-desktop-database doesn't run 20 times during a gnome update.