[justsomehnguy]

> At least 3 minutes boot time, then 1 minute spinning and another for icons to show up

This is not a sw issue, but a hardware one. As other commenter note - you didn't even check if the system on SSD.

> but this Debian machine hasn't been reinstalled in at least 4 years and I'm pretty sure I still don't have a clue about Linux, yet it still runs smoother than butter.

And I can show you X301 what run fine enough with Win10 yet it is slow as molasses on CentOS8. What gives? And yes, it has both on SSD, not HDD.