[LAU] OS for realtime operation

[Paul Davis]

On 1/10/12, Jeremy Jongepier <jeremy at autostatic.com> wrote:
> On 01/09/12 23:01, Moshe Werner wrote:
>> Something little OT, but what exactly is the difference between
>> Windows/Mac, where one doesn't need an rt kernel to run realtime
>> processes,
>> and Linux which needs one?
>
> Hello Moshe,
>
> On Linux you don't need a real-time kernel to run real-time processes
> either.

to clarify a little more:

1) on linux, **access** to realtime scheduling is not necessarily
granted to normal users, unlike the situation on windows and OS X. on
any sane linux system, this is easy to alter. on any sane linux system
that targets music/pro-audio/media production, its already set up that
way and so there is no difference between these systems and windows or
OS X in this regard.

2) the PREEMPT_RT kernel is substantially "more realtime" than any
version of windows or OS X that you could lay your hands on. its more
like an actual realtime OS than the kind of general purpose OS that
regular Linux, Windows and OS X represent, though without actually
being suitable (quite) for "hard RT" tasks.