I agree with @qocu@hexbear.net . It sounds like you are trying to replicate your workflow. Windows and Linux come from different mentalities. There won’t always be a drop in replacement.
I’m short on time but perhaps I can help with your point 9 though.
Each distro’s repos are built by the people that use that particular distro. Somebody needed a particular piece of software, found it wasn’t in the repository and decided to package it and perhaps maintain it for the repo. Sometimes this is the original developer, sometimes not.
All software is built from source code. If the source code is available for Linux, you can compile it yourself. Instructions for how to do so are usually provided by the developer along with the source code, nowadays usually found at their git repository.
Of course, you don’t have to compile all your own software (it can be a headache, which is why someone came up with precompiled packages), but it is an option if the software in question is not available in your distribution’s repo.
Your number 1 point: I like Kate, vscode and micro as text editors. They are fairly simple.
Last time I tried (several years ago, pre-Proton) iTunes would run fine under Wine but couldn’t see a connected iPhone.