Real-time Ubuntu is now available for the first time

Ubuntu is gearing up to respond to Industry 4.0 in an era of increasing interconnectivity with the release of the latest real-time 22.04 LTS version.

Canonical, the company behind the popular open source operating system, says real-time Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is designed with performance, ultra-low latency, and security in mind.

With this release, the OS is aiming to deliver top performance to the telecommunications network amid the transformation to 5G, the automotive industry, and other models related to the interconnectivity associated with the so-called fourth industrial revolution.

Real-time Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

For pro users, this news has been a long time coming. While Canonical (opens in new tab) released a beta version in April 2022, the company advised against users deploying it for production workloads as it came with no support, but almost 10 months later it is now generally available. 

Part of the low-latency OS’s success is down to the integration of the out-of-tree PREEMPT_RT patches for x86 and ARM architectures, which Ubuntu says “ensure[s] time-predictable task execution” by making the kernel more preemptive than mainline Linux.

Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth said: “The real-time Ubuntu kernel delivers industrial-grade performance and resilience for software-defined manufacturing, monitoring and operational tech”.

Shuttleworth also explained that “Ubuntu is now the world’s best silicon-optimised AIOT platform on NVIDIA, Intel, MediaTek, and AMD-Xilinx silicon.”

The open source company says that the added support for real-time compute allows it to “[push] the envelope of digital infrastructure and [bring] the future of robotics automation forward.”

What this means for companies is that they will have a new, powerful tool to aid in the development of interconnected devices as they gear up toward Industry 4.0.