Realtime kernel choice for current Mint versions

[crlMIDI]

Applications running in real time need a special kernel that doesn't allow the operating system to interfere with the timing of inputs and outputs. Examples include music and numerical machine control (CNC). With an ordinary kernel, a computer with a 300 picosecond clock can't play a little piece of music without introducing a latency of >100 milliseconds. A CNC machine might have stepping motors that must step in time; disaster will strike if the OS goes off looking for updates, for example.

The documentation for LinuxCNC lists available realtime kernels, with remarks about peripheral supports and so on:
https://linuxcnc.org/docs/2.8/html/gett ... quirements

There is a recent tendency in the CNC field to use instead a dedicated microcontroller running Linux, such as the Beaglebone, so the PC provides only the user interface which isn't time-critical. However, many amateurs use very inexpensive interface microcontrolers (Arduino, Smoothieware...) with a serial USB connection. While these do buffer irregular timing to some extent, they still often run into trouble (though with the simple circuitry that's commonly used it's hard to distinguish timing from electronic problems).

I'd like to set up Intel NUC7CJY mini PCs (the cheapest model, with Celeron) for both music and CNC. These run Mint Cinnamon 20.3 nicely, and I don't want to change to a distribution I don't know. So my question is whether anyone could advise on the most suitable runtime kernel for this situation.

[SMG]

Applications running in real time need a special kernel that doesn't allow the operating system to interfere with the timing of inputs and outputs. Examples include music and numerical machine control (CNC). With an ordinary kernel, a computer with a 300 picosecond clock can't play a little piece of music without introducing a latency of >100 milliseconds. A CNC machine might have stepping motors that must step in time; disaster will strike if the OS goes off looking for updates, for example.

I do not know about CNC machinery, but there are quite a few people doing music work who use the low-latency kernels available in Synaptic Package manager. If I recall correctly, there is a low-latency version of each kernel which is normally available in Update Manager.

[t42]

These run Mint Cinnamon 20.3 nicely, and I don't want to change to a distribution I don't know. So my question is whether anyone could advise on the most suitable runtime kernel for this situation.

For RT kernel you need to go for Debian. With some effort you can install 2.8 even on Debian 11 (I guess better with XFCE or Mate DE).