Several readers wrote to alert us to the inclusion of real-time features in the mainline Linux kernel starting with version 2.6.18. (Linus Torvalds had announced 2.6.18 on September 19.) Basic real-time support is now mainline. This will ease the job of developers of embedded Linux applications, who for years have been maintaining real-time patch sets outside of the mainline kernel. The announcement was made by TimeSys Corp., a provider of developer services. Much of the work was done by Thomas Gleixner at TimeSys and Ingo Molnar at Red Hat.