Can I use the My favorites keys of the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard in Linux?

"First select a Microsoft keyboard in: System > Preferences > Keyboard > Layout > Keyboard Model. The 4000 isn't listed, but try the 'Multimedia keyboard' or something that sounds reasonably full-featured. They keys may just work. Try them, and change keyboards if they don't.

Then, you can try to customize things by the regular means (which in Ubuntu/GNOME is unfortunately not centralized, and can be tricky).

On the same tab, check out the options in ""Layout options""
Customize more things in System > Preferences > Keyboard shortcuts. The options that are pre-defined here are pretty easy to set, you just select them and then press the key or key-combo you want to assign them to. This will be your most-used place for setting those keys.
Gnome has a more cryptic tool, run from the command line as 'gconf-editor' which can assign key-combos to things that aren't in the standard Keyboard shortcuts dialog. You'll have to google on how to use this.

Hope this helps."