# mSI claw 8 ex ai+ -- A Linux Journey > Source: > Published: 2026-10-20 15:53:21+00:00 The first part is pretty straightforward. Start from the CachyOS handheld base. This gives you a steamdeck experience. We really need a couple of things to work with this bleeding edge hardware: - Kernel 7.1 or 7.2 (currently only 7.1-rc works, its way better than the older kernel on this hardware, but ideally, we need newer!) - gamemoderun profiles/config from level1techs (todo coming soon) - some minor scheduler hints TODO notes go here One of the AWESOME things Intel did was to add **pre-compiled shader downloads** to the driver/setup on windows. HUGE time-saver. On Linux.. we don’t have that.. *yet* So for Lego Batman it’s going to take a while to compile the shaders. Performance: It’s shockingly good with the handfull of tweaks I’ve figured out so far. Performance isn’t nearly as good as windows – yet – but some games are less than 10% slower. Framegen *can* work. Frame pacing is a little tricky and I have been able to solve some of that with tweaks to how gamemoderun/taskset do their thing. The Linux plumbing isn’t setup well to manage both CPU and GPU power management and to give a bit more priority to the GPU, but also without overdoing it. Still, this is an *incredibly promising* platform. TODO 11 Likes [Pearf](https://forum.level1techs.com/u/Pearf) 3 Is there more testing in the pipeline? Any chance you could test bazzite-deck testing on it? This newer images come with current mesa and kernel 7.1 Looking really hard into the Onexplayer 3 right now. This could in theory replace my current handheld AND my personal laptop. So one device less in the bag or one I can also game with. Since before I couldn’t be bothered to carry work laptop + personal laptop + handheld for travel or commute. working on it right now, as a matter of fact. The windows experience is still *solidly* ahead of waht you can do on linux, even if you take out the cool pre-computed shader download stuff, but its amazing how fast it has come in such short time. I can def. “feel” the lack of P-cores using it “like a laptop” but for light duty stuff it does actually work shockingly well. What’s gone right for you?? Oh I might have misread thought you meant you already had a panther lake system and were experimenting with biting PTL in a new form factor 1 Like [Pearf](https://forum.level1techs.com/u/Pearf) 5 No currently in own a T14s strix point and a GPD Win 5. Both on ublue Aurora and Bazzite. I was wondering if I can merge both together. At home I have a nice TB dock with two 4k screens. On the laptop I only code, devops and browse the web. And on the GPD ergonomics are not the best and the limited charging over usb-c is really annoying. Bazzite maintainers have the Acer Predator Atlas 8 - so hopefully we’ll see improvements soon for this Intel platform. Any news from your side [@wendell](https://forum.level1techs.com/u/wendell) ?