Does the 1.6 minecraft launcher have command-line options to go directly to a profile?

Solution 1:

You can make separate work directories for the launcher and start it like this:

java -jar ~/minecraft/Minecraft.jar --workDir ~/minecraft/user1/
java -jar ~/minecraft/Minecraft.jar --workDir ~/minecraft/user2/
#etc

(For Windows users, just specify the folders as you normally would: e.g. java -jar "D:\Games\Minecraft\Minecraft.jar" --workDir "D:\Games\Minecraft\User1\")

By doing this, you will get completely separate environments for the game, so each one of them will keep its own login data (you still need to press the "Play" button), but will also have separate worlds and resource packs, and the launcher will download/update the game separately.
However, that can behavior can be changed, especially easily on Linux. You can share the singleplayer worlds, for example, if you make a symlink to one environment's saves folder in other folder(s).

There seems to be no way to connect to a server with a command line parameter, because the only command line parameters the launcher accepts right now are: work directory, proxy server, force update. (use --help to look at that)