Katapult
Before I decided on Ubuntu as my Linux flavour of choice I dabbled in quite a few. Some being Gnome based and others on the KDE side. The one and only thing that I truly missed from KDE was Katapult.
Katapult is a launcher program that is super fast, super easy, super cool. Tonight I decided to install it into Gnome and here is how I did it.
Open a terminal window and enter the following:
$ sudo apt-get install katapult
It will automatically add some of the KDE libs it needs as it is a KDE application. To start Katapult hit “Alt + F2″ and enter “katapult”. A little system tray icon will appear.
To use Katapult, you would normally use the “Alt + Space” keys but that did not work for me. To change the default key binding, right click on the tray icon and select “Configure Global Shortcuts”. Change it to what you like (I changed mine to “Ctrl + Space”).
If you want Katapult to start up automatically, add it to your sessions by going to “System -> Preferences -> Sessions”. Add a new one with the command set to “katapult”.
Now you can launch apps as fast as you can type 
See xbindkeys
Hi Roy,
I had a look at XBindkeys (http://hocwp.free.fr/xbindkeys/xbindkeys.html). Seems like it would be pretty cool so I’ll try it out later tonight. The thing I like about Katapult is it’s integrated calculator etc.
Personal preference I suppose.
Roy,
Katapult is much more than a key combination binding program. It allows quick access to all of your existing documents, bookmarks, utilities, shortcuts, kmenu entries, etc… without having to establish unique key combinations for all of them. It’s a *lot* more intuitive and flexible. Think outside the box on this one.