I would like to port Qubes to be using XFCE applications ASP. Problem is whitelisted appmenus. These cannot be upgraded. Removal of KDE applications for users who upgrade would leave existing users without whitelisted appmenu entries.
I.e. I wanted to replace hardened-desktop-applications-kde with hardened-desktop-applications-xfce in package whonix-gateway-shared-packages-shared-meta.
Then also xfce meta packages could use whonix-gateway-shared-packages-shared-meta. Then we would not have to duplicate listing Depends:.
That would also port Whonix KDE from KDE applications to XFCE applications but I think it is ok. Rather I was also considering to upgrade everyone automatically from Whonix KDE to Whonix XFCE but that may not be possible. At least not without an unclean way. Those who are now using non-qubes-whonix-workstation-kde can’t have this package removed and replaced by non-qubes-whonix-workstation-xfce unless perhaps
non-qubes-whonix-workstation-xfce Conflicts: with, and Replaces: non-qubes-whonix-workstation-kde. Maybe not a good idea. Last time these meta package migration did not go too well.
Having that sorted hopefully (otherwise please send a pull request shifting other KDE packages)., let me ask again.
Is it a good idea to merge whonix-workstation-default-applications-gui into whonix-workstation-packages-recommended-gui? Or vice versa?
Yes.
Deprecated debian-vm since a non-hardened but still somewhat modified debian-vm will likely have no demand. So either no plain Debian VM ever or a plain one without any packages by Whonix installed.
Unlikely. As long as the top most dependency package that everyone is installed isn’t renamed/replaced, I am not worried.
Done. hardened-desktop-environment-essential-xfce was non-functional probably anyhow since it did not depend on lightdm.