Instead, you should netboot them, and run nfsroot; works with irix so I suspect it will work with linux; dhcpd will inform of the tftp location of the kernel and pass the right parameters, should be doable and faster, more reliable. Now what I wonder is if X11/Xorg supports any of these framebuffers.
This monitor the "Pro Display XDR" is to glossy for hours of coding imho. That is, you don't need 6k for coding either, so that's probably not their audience.