Regarding a better default terminal app, I use Terminator (http://www.tenshu.net/terminator/). It's by far the best terminal I've found and far superior (imho) to ITerm2 on the mac. apt-get install terminator and spend some time looking at the man page.

Regarding window snapping, if you're talking about win7's ability to drag a window over to one side and have it snap to half the screen, check out the Compiz Grid plugin. It provides similar but far more capable abilities.