Pardon my ignorance; but what would HDMI have to do with the issues I've noted? In Raspbian, the Pi is a champion, minus some USB issues. Why would HDMI be any different in BSD? Why would HDMI cause lag or infinite compiling? Also, thanks for your replies. Amidst the onslaught of downvotes, I nearly committed YC-Seppuku in shame. Also-also, with a bit of irony, after I'd expressed my satisfaction with Debian Testing (after two happy years), this very night "apt-get dist-upgrade" wanted to remove everything "X", e.g. xorg, xserver, etc., and iptables too. These are the less pleasant moments of Testing. Pretty much annihilated my laptop, removing synaptic input drivers and every other useful thing it could sabotage. Nothing single-user mode can't surmount, but man, what timing. Happens about once/twice per year.