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An Anonymous Coward writes:

By committing the Kconfig knobs, [kernel.org] Linux is now capable of being configured into a Real-time Operating System. [wikipedia.org] The result, due to an ongoing effort of just over 20 years, now allows for the all developers and users to utilize real-time computing without having to target a completely separate OS. Embedded systems and live processing will likely see more immediate improvements. This support is limited to X86, X86_64, ARM64, and RISCV and only capable of hard real time on hardware that supports it. However, the new competition and interest will likely spur on more developments in Real-Time Computing the future.

One final note is that enabling PREEMPT_RT is not a panacea leading to better performance. Real time computing and real-time OSes sacrifice maximum throughput for guaranteed latency with minimal jitter. Real time does not mean "as fast as possible." Real time means "not too slow." In the wrong situation, it can actually make your performance worse.

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