config.txt display_default_lcd adafruit 2.8 tft lcd display quotation

Hi there, I recently picked up an Adafruit 2.8"" TFT display for use with a Raspberry Pi 2. I installed the recommended Adafruit image, updated Raspbian, and everything seems to be working great, but have found the screen is so small, I can"t actually make use of the entire desktop. For instance, when I open a window, it cuts short, preventing me from accessing the lower options and commands. Most of the icons overlap, too. I"ve tried using the ctrl-left-click method to scan across the desktop, but that doesn"t seem to be working. I"ve also tried installing Kodi, but it doesn"t seem to want to load, either. Lastly, I tried changing the resolution settings through config.txt, but they haven"t seemed to have taken effect. Would I be right in saying that a fixed resolution may be hard-coded into the screen itself?

Going further I plugged a HDMI display and Voila! there is my Desktop, but no mirror at all. Even the touchscreen is working and I can move de cursor over the Desktop (HDMI) with my finger on the 2.8" display.

Going further again, with the HDMI plugged and choosing console I can startx and the desktop goes to HDMI, then I can see running Xorg using top from SSH. Restart again the script and I choose mirror, no HDMI connected and black screen over the TFT, but I also can see Xorg running.

But, this did not rotate the screen, after reboot. Is there another way to change the screen orientation? or maybe there should be other options in the adafruit.conf file, that I"m not aware of?

Ok, I went ahead and bought the setup anyway after I saw one source on the internet that had config.txt settings for a similar-looking 4.3" LCD panel. I started with the config.txt entries from Adafruit"s Kippah tutorial for the 5"/7" panels, and it kind of works. The problem is that I can never get the X resolution to 480x272. If I change the hdmi_cvt to "480 272 60 3", xrandr reports 1920x272. I found that if I change the 480 to something lower like 240, then xrandr reports (IIRC) 960x272.

The strange thing is, despite xrandr reporting these different resolutions, the display always looks the same: the menu button and icons all look the same size and the taskbar and such always extend past the viewable portion of the screen. If I remove all of the dpi_* and hdmi_* config.txt entries, it seems to default to 640x480 and only then can I see half of one of the tray icons from the right-hand side of the taskbar. I guess the Pi, the board, or the display or some combination cannot do native resolution scaling similar to the dedicated controller boards I"ve seen others use to attach an LCD panel to their Pis.

From what I understand, this Kippah board is related to Gert"s VGA addon, so I hope someone that maybe someone familiar with that hardware will be able to help guide me? I"m far from being an electronics/display expert as I"m more of a software developer trying to hack together a fun project, so any help provided is greatly appreciated.