[Nottingham] VNC box in place of port replicator

[notlug]

Hi all,

I'm in the market for a laptop[1], all well and good.
Usage will be mostly as a _quiet_ desktop replacement
with occasional mobility so I've been discovering that
current (USB3, displaylink based) laptop port replicators
don't work with linux.

I was thinking, given the £100 a port replicator can cost,
can I instead by a diddy little raspberry Pi-like box
with networking, display and a few usb ports and
set it up as a VNC client for all of the boxes
(laptop, desktop, local server etc) I have
(yes, I'm re-creating the old x-term days :).

Does anyone have any experience of doing this sort of
thing, and does it work well enough ?

Also, doing graphics over the network, I'm keen to make
the networking gigabit. Raspberry Pi's, beagleboards etc
all come with 10/100 network sockets.  Does anyone know
of an equivalent that has at least 1 gigabit port,
fullHD display output and a few usb ports ?

[1] Eg. https://www.system76.com/

Have fun,
Duncan