I use Librewolf primarily because of vimium-c and ublock, but it's not my preference. I use it mainly for corporate attention-economy sites.

My all-time favorite and primary is vimb. Since migrating to webkitgtk-6.0, it works quite well. Every instance is bubblewrapped, but if anonymity is your goal, you'd want to make sure it's carefully configured. You are probably aware, but browserleaks.com is a nice site for privacy testing.

Just because an organization ostensibly respects individual autonomy does NOT mean that they are a "good" actor. Just as not all corporations, or departments within said corporation, are "bad".

I'm not saying you are right or wrong about brave, but if your threat model is informed by heresay and group-selection-rooted associations, you run a high risk of getting got. Stay vigilant out there and be wary of in/out group messaging.

I did this a few years back and chose to host, for now, with migadu. They have imap, pop, and a web interface. I use POP myself, because I prefer to house my data.

Client-wise, I use mutt and download messages with mpop, which is a snap to compile if your distro doesn't have a package.

I have no complaints. This setup is flexible and simple. Migadu provides clear instructions for setting up your domain.