I had the same problem, i did start with arch ,but man i remember doing a update after 4 days(4Gb of new updates) and my system faild to boot. From that moment i went debian route.
I am using debias as os , and never had a problem with thunderbird, did you used recently? I am not against web, but i manage 5 emails so no way the web is a option for me.
Also i start to use the rss from thunder and is cool.
Well i am far far from Russia so i don't care, it can't be worst compared to google. I don't believe too much in the real privacy, one way or another 3 letter agencies will get the info.
I had the same problem, i did start with arch ,but man i remember doing a update after 4 days(4Gb of new updates) and my system faild to boot. From that moment i went debian route.