I have resolved this issue on my own machine and I think I have determined the cause. It seems to be related to the "sudo: unable to resolve host" issue. During the span of time that package managers were running slowly, I was receiving that message from sudo. After resolving that sudo issue, I noticed that not only package managers, but all other gksu applications which had been running slowly (like my backup application) had stopped locking up my machine and started working at a good speed once again.
I have resolved this issue on my own machine and I think I have determined the cause. It seems to be related to the "sudo: unable to resolve host" issue. During the span of time that package managers were running slowly, I was receiving that message from sudo. After resolving that sudo issue, I noticed that not only package managers, but all other gksu applications which had been running slowly (like my backup application) had stopped locking up my machine and started working at a good speed once again.
If you are interested, I discuss my findings in more detail in a different bug report: /bugs.launchpad .net/ubuntu/ +bug/235637/ comments/ 2
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