Last I checked you can not connect to the internet on setup and it’ll let you skip account creation.
More or less yes. If you keep personal stuff to Linux then you can expect a reasonable level of privacy with respect to system wide tracking.
Most Linux distros don’t have an advertising network thus no inherent benefit from collecting data. Yes they can collect data to sell but in the Linux Ethos that’s been a No-No for a long time. Usually you can stop, any or all, data form reaching the distro makers by disabling crash reporting.