About 1 i am using https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext Feels very close experience to notepad++
2.I am using ifuse without any need for itunes i simply copy paste files as it would be android phone i am using it in cli ,but u can try to use https://github.com/Helltar/idevicegui
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I am using celluloid or smplayer which is frontend for mpv,mplayer and other,great tool.
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U can customize almost any shortcut u want
About distribution i like linux mint cinnamon for me it feels quite polished and also using arch linux with kde,but i don't think it's for u,at least for now.But at the same time arch have the biggest repository of any kind of programs comparing with other distros + aur .i am running it on everyday bases and mostly everything just works except if nvidia driver break something from time to time.
T launcher working fine under linux since it java just find and download it as .jar file But i also recommend higly recommend
https://llaun.ch/en it was original tlauncher laucher, more details https://telegra.ph/The-True-Story-of-TL-05-21 Developer even publishing source code of his laucher. But u need to download from ukrainian,russja,belarusia or other countries cause for most europe couries it gonna show DCMA banner from mojang,in other case it will load all files
U don't need windows version of cs 1.6.Valve ported all cs to linux,so so find native 1.6 version https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5735662
Also recommens u to try project portproton for launching games,most of my games works with 2 clicks https://github.com/Castro-Fidel/PortWINE
If u get used to notepad++ very much u can use reimplementation of it which cross platform https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext