Gradle takes so long to download. From either AndroidStudio or from command line ./wgradle, one of the first things it does is try to download from https://services.gradle.org/distributions/… and then sits for hours. I tried downloading ./gradle-4-4-all.zip using Chrome, and it tells me it will take 7 to 8 hours, so if I need to configure a project, I have until the next day? That is unacceptable. Is there a faster mirror somewhere?
The download done by ./gradlew will only occur the first time for a GRADLE_USER_HOME, but the time you’re seeing is abnormal. Gradle uses the CloudFlare CDN, so you should be connecting to an edge server that is physically close to you, not directly to the infrastructure Gradle is running. Perhaps there’s something physically wrong between you and the nearest CloudFlare data center.
For comparison, my average download of a new version is always less than 10 seconds, normally around 6 seconds, and in a best few cases, 3 seconds. This is from DFW, Texas, USA. What region are you downloading from?