When working in a terminal, the f-keys don't work, because they are reserved for (rather useless) Unity shortcuts. htop, midnight commander and other programs use the f-keys for important program features. Some of the Unity shortcuts (F1, F10) can be disabled, but it doesn't work reliably. F10 for example will work for programs when the shortcut is disabled in the gnome-terminal menu, but it still brings up the context menu at the same time, so that doesn't help much. Please, let the terminal programs make use of all the f-keys.
Note that this is not a feature request, but a bug report, because the programs in question don't work properly without reconfiguration. Some of these are very basic tools for system administration, so they should work properly out of the box.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: unity 5.12-0ubuntu1.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-26.41-generic 3.2.19
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-26-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu11
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: [core,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,vpswitch,snap,mousepoll,resize,place,move,wall,grid,regex,imgpng,session,gnomecompat,animation,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,workarounds,scale,expo,ezoom,unityshell]
Date: Thu Jul 19 11:09:42 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta amd64 (20120301)
ProcEnviron:
PATH=(custom, no user)
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 775434, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.