Hello Michael, Thank you for your detailed response and for sharing these insights. I apologize for the delay in getting back to you—I was on an unexpected leave. I truly appreciate the information you provided and the clarity around KDE’s support model and preferred approach. I’d like to take a bit of time to review this internally and determine how we can best support you in this scenario. I will follow up with more guidance and next steps shortly. Thank you again for your patience and collaboration. Best regards, Marisa Irimie
[A close-up of a logo Description automatically generated] Marisa Irimie App Assure Manager [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> App Assure<https://aka.ms/appassure> | Microsoft FastTrack App Compatibility and Product Integrations To learn how Microsoft respects your privacy, see our Privacy Statement<https://aka.ms/MicrosoftPrivacyPage>. If you wish to stop receiving emails from this program, please contact us at [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Upcoming out of Office: ________________________________ From: Michael Pyne <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, November 14, 2025 11:10 PM To: Marisa Irimie (Lugera and Makler) <[email protected]>; [email protected] <[email protected]> Cc: Fasttrack – App Assure <[email protected]> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Fw: Microsoft App Assure | KDE e.V. compatibility with Windows on Arm | CRM:01390020047 You don't often get email from [email protected]. Learn why this is important<https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification> Hi Marisa, Thank you for your patience, some of the delay was so that some of us could discuss the request. Emails like this to the KDE e.V. are infrequent. And even this response is not speaking for the e.V., I just volunteered to make sure your email and followup received a reply. While the KDE e.V. provides support to the developers in the KDE community that create some of the apps published on the Microsoft Store, including Okular, Filelight, and KStars, it does not exert the level of control of development where support such as break-fix or escalation would make sense. KDE developers already support our users on a multitude of platforms, including ARM, so we have some familiarity with some of the general porting issues already. This desire to reach our users where they are, no matter the platform or OS, is one of the reasons many of our apps are available in the Microsoft Store for Windows users. As we are a worldwide community who volunteer our time and effort into building this collection of software, the most useful types of engineering advice are typically those in forms that can be consumed at an individual developer's convenience, such as technical articles/blogs, reference documentation, sample code (appropriately licensed for open source usage), and even videos. This is especially true of advice that goes beyond generic best practices, such as if there are any Windows for Arm-specific differences with APIs, programming language object/type differences, and so on. If this is the kind of thing App Assure provides, static code analysis to look for compatibility issues might also be helpful, but would be most helpful when provided to the specific application developers or mailing list rather than the KDE e.V. Members of this list can help point you or others to specific mailing lists or project boards if you have suggestions for specific apps we publish on the Microsoft Store. We are appreciative of offers to help, I just want to emphasize our model is closer to a good number of part-time developers than to a model where a couple of tech exchange meetings would take care of a majority of active developers. As you mentioned in your first email being unsure of our compatibility with Windows for ARM, I also wanted to provide links to the relevant information: * Documentation to our developers on how to package KDE apps for Microsoft Store is at https://develop.kde.org/docs/packaging/windows/microsoftstore/packaging/ which refers to artifacts from our automated CI/CD * That CI/CD is primarily driven out of "KDE Craft" (https://invent.kde.org/packaging/craft-blueprints-kde/-/blob/master/.gitlab-ci.yml). Taking a look at that file, it appears we only package Windows apps for x86. But this wouldn't be an official support policy as much as the limit of our "best effort" towards supporting Windows where its users are. Build system resources permitting, I think we'd package for Windows ARM as well if the setup is not too difficult (and remains not too difficult, maintenance burden for a feature used by very few features is problematic). That would be a topic for our KDE Sysadmins (who are also volunteers from around the world). If it's easier to digest in a discussion I'm happy to serve as a POC for a short call (and at least for the upcoming week can generally be available at or after 4pm U.S. Eastern Time). If you just needed to ensure that someone reached out to KDE, you can consider that task accomplished, with our collective thanks. Also, most of our software is built upon the Qt toolkit, so if no one has reached out to them, I would recommend doing so. They do have a for-profit company you can engage with (see https://www.qt.io/), and any significant Qt issues with Windows for Arm will also be issues for KDE-based software unless they can be worked around. They do at least support ARM with their latest release (see https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/windows.html though it does not support the Windows 11-specific ARM64EC). Finally, even if we don't setup a call, if we do run into Arm-specific issues, would it be best to reach out to you/your team to get them resolved? Thank you again for your proactive engagement. Regards, - Michael Pyne On 11/12/25 6:05 AM, Marisa Irimie (Lugera and Makler) wrote: Hello all, I wanted to follow up on my previous email regarding Windows on Arm compatibility for KDE e.V. We’d like to ensure your applications run smoothly on the latest Microsoft platforms, including Copilot+ PCs. As mentioned, App Assure provides no-cost engineering support such as: * Technical workshops and best practices * Code reviews and platform optimization * Break-fix assistance and escalation to Microsoft engineers Would you be available for a 30-minute onboarding call to discuss the next steps? Please share a time that works best for you. Looking forward to your response. Best regards, [A close-up of a logo Description automatically generated] Marisa Irimie App Assure Manager [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> App Assure<https://aka.ms/appassure> | Microsoft FastTrack App Compatibility and Product Integrations To learn how Microsoft respects your privacy, see our Privacy Statement<https://aka.ms/MicrosoftPrivacyPage>. If you wish to stop receiving emails from this program, please contact us at [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Upcoming out of Office: ________________________________ From: Marisa Irimie (Lugera and Makler) <[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 12:53 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]> Cc: Fasttrack – App Assure <[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Microsoft App Assure | KDE e.V. compatibility with Windows on Arm | CRM:01390020047 ***If you’re not the right contact, please forward this message to the appropriate stakeholder and include them in the thread.*** Hello all, My name is Marisa Irimie, and I’m an App Assure Manager with Microsoft’s FastTrack Center. My team helps Microsoft customers and ISVs ensure application compatibility with the latest Microsoft platforms, including Windows on Arm and Copilot+ PCs. We’d like to collaborate with you to prepare KDE.e.V for Windows on Arm. I couldn’t find any compatibility details on the website, so I wanted to reach out directly. App Assure offers no-cost engineering support, including: * Technical workshops and best practices * Code reviews and platform optimization * Break-fix assistance and escalation to Microsoft engineers I’d be happy to schedule a 30-minute onboarding call next week to get started. Please let me know your availability. Best regards, Marisa Irimie [A close-up of a logo Description automatically generated] Marisa Irimie App Assure Manager [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> App Assure<https://aka.ms/appassure> | Microsoft FastTrack App Compatibility and Product Integrations To learn how Microsoft respects your privacy, see our Privacy Statement<https://aka.ms/MicrosoftPrivacyPage>. If you wish to stop receiving emails from this program, please contact us at [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Upcoming out of Office:
