What Is Real-Time Linux?

Initially, “Real-Time Linux” uniquely designated the RTLinux project released in 1996 by Michael Barabanov under Victor Yodaiken’s supervision. The original goal of the project was to provide a mechanism for deterministic response times under a Linux environment. Later, the project was expanded to support much more than the originally intended applications, and today supports a variety of non-embedded uses, such as
real-time stock market trading systems and other “enterprise” applications. RTLinux was sold to Wind River in early 2007.

Today, there are several other big name real-time projects for Linux, including one that is aiming to add real-time support to the official Linux kernel. You will learn much more about these projects in the latter including coverage of some of the innovative concepts and development ideas being worked on. Of course, by the time you read this book much of this technology may be even more commonplace than it is now, especially once real-time capabilities are available in every kind of Linux system installed from here to Timbuktu.