That’s such a great decision! I have always disliked KDE, especially in the context of Whonix VM, I really like that!
I am currently enjoying Whonix XFCE and so far nothing to complain about, on the contrary.
I would however have two suggestions:
1. gpa as a replacement for kgpg
To me, having a GUI pgp program is wholly part of the Whonix experience. I really think it serves the purpose of Whonix. Instead of kgpg and its dependencies, I would suggest to include the gpa program, a very lightweight and user-friendly GUI gpg tool:
It only takes 2,153 kB of free space and needs only two packages (gpa and gpgsm). Works well, I have just tested it:
2. Replace the stock Applications Menu by whisker-menu (panel plugin)
A small and very lightweight (689 kB) package, xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin greatly enhances user-friendliness, by allowing to search for program by their names (a feature every modern OS provides). It really gives the XFCE experience a much more modern feeling in my opinion. No need to look in every subdirectory to find the right program:
