That reminded me of something that happened a few times before here: the monitor connector got partially pulled out in a way that just one or two color channels got disconnected, and the whole screen turned purple, red, etc!

In reference to video its best not to hot plug it either. I've done it lots and nothing bad has happened yet...

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Personally, I wouldn't do it.

Not all devices are designed to be hot-plugged. While most times nothing happens it can fry your system.

I agree that even hot pluggable devices ought to be stopped or unmounted before attempting a removal. I might go further than MrCode and say that only usb and firewire (and some high end server cpu,memory,hardrives etc) are to be considered hot swappable.

One of the other risks of changing backside connectors is you run a good chance the card may be removed while you at it.

Play it safe and shut it down or you may be back asking what happened.

IIRC there's an option in the NVIDIA Linux control panel which allows you to detect "hotplugged" display devices. Does that mean it would be considered at least semi-safe to hotplug a display?

I can see where that might be useful for laptops connecting to a projector for a presentation, for example...