Linux 7.3 Finally Maps the MSI Claw's M-Center Button
A patch to the MSI WMI driver stops kernel spam and gives the Claw A8 BZ2EM's left-of-screen key a real scancode, at the cost of duplicate F15 events on older models.
Source material: phoronix.com
The Double-F15 Quirk on Other Claws
There is a wrinkle, and Clark documented it in his patch description. For the MSI Claw A1M, the 7 AI+ A2VM, and the 8 AI+ A2VM, applying this mapping produces a second F15 event whenever the M-Center button is pressed. Those models already get the keypress from their AT Keyboard device, and now the WMI path adds another. Clark tested it and found the duplicate events to be harmless — nothing in the kernel default action on F15, no accidental shortcut triggers. But it is a quirk that users on those older Claws will see in their event logs. The tradeoff is deliberate: the patch prioritizes making the A8 BZ2EM's button functional over keeping the event stream perfectly clean on three other models. For anyone running a Linux distribution on those devices, the extra F15 is a cosmetic redundancy, not a bug that breaks anything.
The $1,199 Handheld Behind the Fix
The MSI Claw A8 BZ2EM retails for $1,199 and includes an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor, an 8-inch 1920x1200 IPS panel at 120Hz, 24GB of LPDDR5x memory, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. The patch targets its M-Center button located left of the screen, which on this model produces no associated keyboard event. Without the patch, pressing the button generates kernel log spam from unrecognized WMI events. With the patch, the button is mapped to a scancode consistent with other models, though it may cause double F15 events on some other MSI Claw variants.
Where the Patch Goes From Here
The patch is currently sitting in the platform-drivers-x86 for-next Git branch, which is the staging ground for changes destined for the next merge window. That means Linux 7.3 is the target release for the fix, assuming nothing gets held up in review. Clark's work follows a pattern common in x86 platform driver development: small, targeted changes that smooth out laptop and handheld quirks. The merge window for 7.3 will open later in the year, and the patch is expected to be pulled in by the x86 platform maintainers. Once it lands, users on the A8 BZ2EM can map the M-Center key to whatever they want — a game launcher, a system monitor, a shortcut to suspend. The double-F15 on older Claws will remain, but as Clark noted, that is a harmless cost for finally giving this handheld a button that works.
Where this came from. This breakdown is based on source material published at phoronix.com. Images above are used with the credits shown beneath each one.