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: