Excitement is building that the real-time kernel " [1]PREEMPT_RT " support might finally be ready for the mainline kernel as soon as the upcoming [2]Linux 6.12 merge window. It will be interesting to see if that long-awaited day finally comes this month but recently noted patches have now been queued into tip/tip.git's "sched/rt" branch ahead of the Linux 6.12 merge window.

As noted last week [3]Linux is very close to mainlining the final PREEMPT_RT patches that work around non-blocking consoles / atomic consoles is getting wrapped up. So last week the patches were posted for actually allowing PREEMPT_RT to be enabled across x86/x86_64, ARM64, and RISC-V architectures.

Adding to the excitement now is that those PREEMPT_RT enablement patches have been queued into [4]tip/tip.git's sched/rt Git branch . From there they could potentially be submitted as part of the material coming up in the Linux 6.12 merge window.

With the Linux 6.12 merge window potentially opening up next week [5]if Linux 6.11 stable is out this Sunday otherwise the following week, it won't be too much longer of waiting to see if the stars are aligned for getting the real-time support buttoned up for Linux 6.12. Beyond the fact that the out-of-tree Linux RT patches have been many years in the making, it would be all the more exciting if this is the case considering Linux 6.12 is expected to be this year's Long-Term Support (LTS) kernel version.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/PREEMPT_RT

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Linux+6.12

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-PREEMPT_RT-Close-Patches

[4] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip.git/log/?h=sched/rt

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.11-rc7-Released