Thunderbird Windows Profile backup, restore Ubuntu Mate

Hi, In March, when visiting the UK from South Africa, I will be given a "old"Lenovo i7, which I will immediately switch from Windows 10 to Ubuntu Maté only.
My problem is that under my present Windows 10 laptop, via Thunderbird, I have 20 years of archived emails, much of it forgotten family history.*
I want to backup the Thunderbird Profile to a USB thumb drive now and prepare the Lenovo that I am presently using for donating to a friend in need.
It seems to me that the Mozilla article “Profiles - Where Thunderbird stores your messages and other user data” should be sound advice.
My fear is that while I may have a sound backup, restoring this in 3 months time when using Ubuntu Maté, could be problematic as current advice online seems to be that I should ensure that the versions of Thunderbird must match.
What can the experienced members of the Ubuntu Maté Community advise? The archived email is treasure to me - losing this would be numbing, especially as my 81 year old memory is no longer crystal clear. Thanks, EdwinJ

Another user posed the same question:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1271806

You can't sync every setting between computers, but you certainly don't have to repeat the setup on every mirror. Copy the Thunderbird folder from the source computer and insert it in any other computer, no matter the OS.

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