There were two cases I experienced slow Docker commands
- Antivirus installed on the Linux host and checking the docker data root where containers and images are stored. In this case the antivirus has to be configured to ignore the docker data root
- When there was a problem on a physical host, possibly with software RAID configuration and basic IO operations slowed down. Not just Docker but the whole host. It was never proven, just suspected
If everything is fast, but Docker is slow, I would say the issue is an antivirus or any software that blocks Docker for minutes. It could be a network issue if the images are pulled from a registry and still not existing on the Docker host. If the host is slow too, then maybe it is not Docker where you should look for the issue.