For those with a MSI Claw A8 BZ2EM handheld gaming system, the model powered by the latest AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme SoC, an important addition is coming to the Linux 7.3 kernel so that the M-Center keys will be properly supported.

Derek Clark took to adding support for the MSI Claw M-Center keys that are left of the screen on the A8 BZ2EM model as they don't end up being associated to a keyboard event. With a patch to the MSI WMI driver, they will now be mapped beginning with Linux 7.3. Derek Clark explained with this patch queued up recently into the platform-drivers-x86's "for-next" Git branch:

"MSI Claw devices produce WMI events through the MSI WMI hotkeys GUID for some of their buttons. When pressed, these cause spam in the kernel. For the majority of devices these events can be safely ignored as they are duplicated by the AT Translated Set 2 Keyboard device exposed as an evdev. For the MSI Claw A8 BZ2EM model's M-Center Menu button (left of the screen) there is no associated keyboard event, so this event must be exposed. Map this button to the same scancode produced by the AT Keyboard device on other models. This does cause double F15 events on the A1M, 7 AI+ A2VM, and 8 AI+ A2VM, but it appears to be harmless in my testing."

The patch is queued into the x86 platform driver's "for-next" Git branch and thus expected to be submitted for the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window.

The MSI Claw A8 BZ2EM retails for around $1199 USD with the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, 8-inch 1920 x 1200 IPS 120Hz panel, 24GB of LPDDR5x memory, and 1TB of NVMe SSD storage.