[tlug] Docked Laptop Dilemma

["David J Iannucci" <jlinux@example.com>]

So.... for a long time I've "struggled" (not very hard, admittedly) with
the so-called (by me) Docked Laptop Dilemma, and I'm only now getting
around to asking other people for ideas about this.

What I mean by this is: I have a very nice Thinkpad at work which I keep
docked most of the time, and which I use in a dual monitor setup (its
LCD + an external monitor).  It runs Gentoo (though I suppose that's
incidental).  Because it's my work machine, I'd like to occasionally
undock it and take it to meetings, then bring it back, redock it, and
continue working as I was.

Unfortunately I've never been very much successful in this, *apparently*
(it seems to me) because the OS is "talking" to various external devices
(primarily the monitor, but also possibly USB devices, etc), and if it
"wakes up" and finds those devices gone, it tends to have a negative
reaction, and need rebooting in short order.  Mind you, I haven't tried
this too recently, and don't have clear memories of exactly what went
wrong, only that it always did.  I tend not to take my laptop to
meetings for this reason (which is probably good because it's easier to
pay attention), and it's never particularly painful that I can't.....
but it seems like it ought to be something doable, and that some geeks
somewhere have figured out how to do.

I hope this doesn't make me look like an id10t, because there's a simple
solution to this that I should have been able to find easily.  But
curious to know if this is a "solved" problem.

Thanks,
Dave