I'm the owner of two laptops, one slightly older and rather bulky 17" PowerBook, and a recent Panasonic T5. I now use the PB as my (stationary) main display via remote X while all work is done on the T5. To this end I've already got a script to automate the "attaching" of the T5, i.e. launching a window manager on the remote display and joining the two displays wrt. keyboard and mouse input with x2x.

I still have to manually kill the old WM on the PB, which I keep running when the T5 isn't connected (the PB still runs my MP3 player and an "emergency" web browser), and start up the network connection on the T5. The latter would be easy to automate but what I'm really looking for now is a way to also automatically have the WM on the PowerBook squirelled away in some "fast user switching"-like fashion so the regular environment could set itself up. Then on some other event, the whole thing should revert to the disconnected setup, automagically unsquirreling the "solo" environment again. I wonder how well the current state of the art in Linuxland will allow me to do that.

I've got my project for the weekend...