Gautam Thaker

Thanks!
Indeed I was able to compile it with a custom kernel, the preemption method option was in the system settings in the menu, and for good measure I also changed the system time slice resolution from 250Hz to 1000Hz in the power settings.



It boots and seems stable so far, but I need to test more. 
 
And yes, also thanks for the tip regarding freezing the updates. Because after an "apt upgrade" it was indeed overwritten by a non-RT kernel.
However I have one question regarding this, @Igor. How can I build Armbian for the latest possible version, since I'm not able to update it after building? When building, I checkout out branch v25.02, but it resulted in building 25.2.1, not 25.2.3 which is the latest. Small difference but still...

In my H96 TV box I have been running Armbian for over an year. Works great. Today I did a fresh install of:

Armbian_community_25.5.0-trunk.256_Rk3318-box_bookworm_current_6.12.19_minimal.img.xz

uname -a shows:

rk3318-box> uname -a
Linux rk3318-box 6.12.19-current-rockchip64 #2 SMP PREEMPT Thu Mar 13 12:02:20 UTC 2025 aarch64 GNU/Linux

It is my understanding that Linux 6.12+ kernel already have all the real-time patches in the mainline kernel sources. All one needs to do is to 

1. rebuild the kernel after configuring for FULL PREEMPT-RT  support

or (if kernel already built with this configured)
1a. reboot after providing to 'grub'  a boot option "preempt=full"

If any one has had experience running the full PREEMPT-RT kernel on rk3318 (or any Armbian box)?  

What are the best steps to get and natively build a new kernel for 6.12.19 on my rk3318 box (only show 27 Gb free though, may not be enough.)