  We report on our exploratory study for the evaluation of the parton
distribution functions from lattice QCD, based on a new method proposed in
Ref.~arXiv:1305.1539. Using the example of the nucleon, we compare two
different methods to compute the matrix elements needed, and investigate the
application of gauge link smearing. We also present first results from a large
production ensemble and discuss the future challenges related to this method.
