Nah, you just use command lines for installing and such. You don't need to use command lines for launching the program... However, with programs like gparted, which is basically fdisk (which can SERIOUSLY screw up your system if you don't know what you're doing) you DO have to use command line to launch that under root (sudo gparted).
However, like I said as far as launching items it's nothing to do with command line. And once Ubuntu is installed you can customize your keyboard for certain actions. F4, for example, launches Firefox. F2, terminal. F3, calculator. Page up/down = volume controls. Insert = lock screen. Pretty nifty.
