Unsure if this would help but you could go to your applications folder (or utilities, cannot remember exactly where) and drag the terminal app onto your dock. This is something I have done for programming on my Mac.
It's been a while since I've used Ubuntu but are you just looking for a basic launcher? If so, here's something that would work. If not maybe have a look at macupdate.com - there are a lot of these types of apps.
I use spotlight as a launcher already but I'm looking for something that lives in the menu bar and I can just click it and it has a small dropdown where I can quickly compile and test something.