The [1]Linux 7.1 mainline kernel will allow building a real-time "PREEMPT_RT" kernel for the ARM architecture with no longer needing any out-of-tree patches.

While there has been mainline Linux kernel support for real-time (RT) on x86/x86_64, ARM64 (AArch64), and RISC-V [2]since Linux 6.12 and [3]LoongArch RT since Linux 6.13 , only now is the ARM (non-ARM64/AArch64) support for older SoCs seeing mainline real-time support with Linux 7.1.

The ARM support for real-time had continued to be carried by the few remaining out-of-tree RT patches but for Linux 7.1 the final hurdles have been overcome to get all the necessary bits in mainline. Prior to the Linux 7.1-rc1 release this past weekend,

[4]this Git merge happened that cleaned up the ARM fault handling and in turn allowing PREEMPT_RT to work for mainline ARM Linux builds.

Indeed with today's [5]v7.1-rc1-rt1 patch release , it notes all the ARM patches are gonee with "everything required" having made it into Linux 7.1-rc1.

As for what the out-of-tree RT patch queue is looking like these days, the bulk are some fixes to the Intel i915 DRM driver, adding a /sys/kernel/realtime entry to indicate it's a real-time kernel, and the remaining patches yet to be mainlined for enabling real-time support on PowerPC. The current patch queue as of Linux 7.1 Git can be found via [6]this Git branch .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Linux+7.1

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.12-Does-Real-Time

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.13-LoongArch

[4] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/129d6eb266e0848c9bf45da6e30291688c12b5ad

[5] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260427095233.W3oOiwbB@linutronix.de/

[6] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rt/linux-rt-devel.git/log/?h=linux-7.1.y-rt