

It used to be BRIC (Brazil, India, China, Russia) or BRICS (same + South Africa). In the article, it has been extended again to other nations, therefore “so-called” because its membership is not the same anymore. Also, the membership seems very informal, it’s just a bunch of countries maintaining ties and having discussions, not a real group of countries, with its own set of rules and institutions.
I would say, like many others, Remmina.
Putty also has a Linux version, so you can use that as well. Its session management is a bit clunky, but it works and it offers some fairly good functionalities.
But ssh is first and foremost a command line tool. As others have said, invest some time to learn its commands and configuration files.