Xhotkeys provides a simple and easily configurable hotkey launcher for the X-Window System, binding keys and mouse buttons to configurable commands. It should work on all desktops (Gnome, KDE, Xfce, ...) available for the GNU/Linux operating system. Configuration files can be modified manually or using a graphical GTK+ configurator.
Source code and binary packages for Debian (so, also Ubuntu) are available.
Xhotkeys is free software.