Yup - I do exactly this for about the last year, and it works as you describe. Long-lived IRC sessions, all of my editing windows open as I like them. You can have nice monitor/chair/keyboard setups at work and home. I find I don't have much use for a laptop any more. If your Windows/ubuntu desktop install breaks, you can reinstall quickly and get back to where you were.
What I mean is - whatever is driving your graphics card, monitors and local network. Sometimes I do a dist upgrade and my video drivers go to junk. Or family install something to my workstation and I find that it has added junk to the boot sector, and I want to get rid of it for sure. Or my mac laptop just starts being really slow for reasons I can't be bothered to investigate. These things are no longer an issue because your desktop install is expendable.
