Add this to your .emacs to allow shift-f1 to launch a gnome terminal

(defun launch-gnome-term ()
"launch gnome-terminal"
(interactive)
(shell-command "gnome-terminal"))

(global-set-key [(shift f1)] `launch-gnome-term)

The good thing about this is it launches the terminal in the directory of the file you are working on… ready for diff’ing, scp’ing etc.

Obviously this can be customized to launch any process you desire.