I have been googling for a terminal lens, i.e. a Unity lens that integrates the terminal into the usual dash replaces the current Alt+F2 functionality.
For instance one could have a line of icons as it currently is, with command history sensitive to the typed word, and below that terminal output. All I could find on this were stale old posts in the Ubuntu Forums and an old brainstorm.
Does anyone know of a working terminal lens for Unity, like my mock-up above?
There is currently nothing that does exactly what it pictured above since, at the moment, a lens cannot define a content area like the one pictured in order to display (and update) the output of a command.
It is possible to press ALT+F2 and run commands from the overlay which appears. However, it is not possible to observe terminal output from commands run from this overlay.
Another option is to use CTRL+ALT+T as a shortcut to open a terminal window.