FreeBSD desktop "best-fit" Dell platform suggestions?

[Polytropon]

On Tue, 2 Apr 2019 14:24:39 -0700, David Christensen wrote:
> 1.  The D945GTP workstation does not seem to support booting from a USB 
> flash drive partitioned with GPT.  It does boot from a SATA SSD 
> partitioned with MBR.  (I seem to recall that it booted from a USB flash 
> drive formatted with MBR.)  Once booted, I installed and/or updated the 
> xorg and xfce packages.  Both X and Xfce work, but maximum graphics 
> resolution seems to be 1600x1200 (monitor is 1920x1080 and this computer 
> can do that with Debian).

You can try to use a xorg.conf or an entry in xorg.conf.d/ to
force a specific screen size that matches the actual physical
screen size of the display, if the autodetect magic does not
work properly. Use xrandr to experiment within an X session.



> 2.  The Inspiron laptop boots the GPT USB flash drive.  Both X and Xfce 
> work.  Maximum graphics resolution seems to be 1024x768 (screen is 
> 1280x800 and this computer can do that with Debian).

Same here.



> The Fn+F8 
> (CRT/LCD) hotkey combination switches video between either the screen or 
> the VGA port (also 1024x768 maximum), but does not drive (mirror) both 
> simultaneously.

This is intended. Older systems often allowed a "3 steps switching"
where you could cycle through LCD / LCD+CRT / CRT. Of course there
are problems when screen size and aspect ratio are different for
LCD and CRT (which isn't a CRT anymore, instead if'ts another LCD
with usually different parameters).

There is also often a "priority selector" that selects one of the
tree (or two) modes mentioned, depending on an external display
being connected or not.





-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...