The Linux Kernel Is Still Rectifying The Year 2038 Problem

[jacob]

64 Bits will get us to the year 292,471,208,630.

Damn! RHEL6 will just have finished booting.

[SystemCrasher]

even if RT was fully merged. it would still be a kconfig option. I don't think mainline ever plans on using certain bits.

Mainline does not really defines which features to enable. Sure, there is defconfig, including x86 builds, but most of time defconfig is not what you want, so most distros are using their own kernel configs anyway. So it is up to them to enable or disable particular features as they see it fits. Those who think they know it better, tend to configure their kernels themselves, for one reason or another. This said, e.g. ubuntu supplies high-latency kernel by default and even their "low latency" kernel leaves a lot to be desired. So one could readily stumble on major latency spikes ("lags") when their system does heavy IO, etc. That's kinda opposite of real time. It wins several percents in benchmarks, but at what cost? The cost is laggy system.

But still, these RT patches are only useful for those who knows what they are doing. They are going to have it hard either way, facing countless obstacles. PC hardware alone is quote hostile to realtime.