It has ssh, equivalents to backup menu (you must get it rooted then get Titanium Backup which stores all userland apps and data, or Nandroid backup which saves every partition), plus you don't need h-e-n because it has native usb otg support. Then you have xterminals, and also vnc viewers.
About smscon, evil alarm and emulators, dunno (not my cups of tea).
You can root following online guides.
Multitasking is really a matter of task switching in Android; apps can work or stall in background according to how they are programmed. Apps are also silently closed when memory they occupy has to be reclaimed. I'm using Ram Manager to get more mem for multitasking, and indeed the Note has plenty.