Changing Desktop Environments?

[acid andy]

I know some people use Xfce, but don't know if they actually use any phone features.

Yep, I'm using Gnome Calls successfully with XFCE though I had to compile it myself along with all the dependencies. I run eg25manager manually at the moment when I want to make a call and I don't even have audio routing set up. I just run a script to unmute all the ALSA channels for the call.

I get SMS with Pidgin.

So it can certainly be made to work, but it won't have the easy to use polish of something like Phosh.