Yes, the time estimate might be optimistic, depends on many things, of course, module list size, disk & network speed, cpu, etc. The important thing is it is non-interactive, you don't have to sit around answering author questions :) (eg: just hitting Enter some 2h later - when coming back to it - to a "stuck" (Y/n)) so in the end it just might feel faster, given you are free to do other important things (eg: coffee/tea) meanwhile. Skipping tests makes it way faster (cpanm -n), but let noone hear us, it's frowned upon with good reason. :)

I prefer the sort for two small reasons, 1. eases a bit the visual inspection before install, and 2. upon progress inspection you might wanna know which letter it's at, has an irrational but human "progress bar" feel to it. :)

Sure, you can output to some log and tail it,

cpanm -v </tmp/pms &>>/tmp/inst.log & tail -f /tmp/inst.log

perl -MLWP::Simple -e'print$_[rand(split(q.%%\n.,
get(q=http://cpan.org/misc/japh=)))]'
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