There is absolutely NO need for video plugs or a keyboard or a monitor when running a Linux mining rig. There's no need to use a remote desktop either (although that's just as trivial as windows). I should know, that's what I do.
When the pools went down I just ssh-ed into my mining box and pointed the miners at a new pool in all of 30 seconds. If I had to do that more than once I could script it, at which point it would be the same effort to change 1, 2, or even 100,000,000,000,000 miners at at once.
Remember, Unix (and Linux) was designed as a command line multi-user OS. There was never a requirement for a monkey pounding on a keyboard while looking at a bitmap display.
With Nvidia drivers you can even run OpenCL *without* a GUI running. ATI still requires the GUI to be started, but there's no need for a monitor to see what it's displaying (in my case it's just a blank screen).