A real-time host OS may be needed when one is dealing with real-time guarantees in ROS applications. To make the installation of an rt-patched Linux kernel much easier, we created two Debian packages which do most of the work. They uses the Linux 3.8.13-rt16 RT-PREEMPT patch for 32-bit and 64-bit systems, respectively.

If you would like to give them a try, you can download the packages from the following links:

32-bit: http://micros.nudt.edu.cn/ros/attachments/download/6409/linux-image-3.8.13-rt16-i386-v0.0.1.deb

64-bit: http://micros.nudt.edu.cn/ros/attachments/download/6413/linux-image-3.8.13-rt16_3.8.13-rt16-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb

Place the corresponding package in any directory, and then run the following command and reboot the system.

Now the real-time kernel will be there.

We would be grateful if you can try them out and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.