I just sat next to a china man in the library, I should've asked him...
It's quite interesting with what kind of topics software developers have to deal with in their daily routine. They get to know a lot of random knowledge about different cultures and countries xD
oh sry, I first wanted to make that point and then forgot answering the actual question x.x
As I know there's no way directly given by any Linux distro to set shortcuts for applications without installing additional programs, not even in Linux Mint, which is probably the most user friendly Linux distro out there.
It's only possible to set custom shortcuts to e.g. launch applications with certain arguments. But that's only what I know so far >_<