I share your frustration with Windows; however "real time Linux" is an oxymoron as well. The moment multitasking is involved real time goes out the window. The only way to produce precisely timed pulses on an I/O port is to run ONE thread. Make a DOS boot disk and be content, you can not do real time and multitasking at the same time. Real time while multitasking is the OS developers idea of "real enough".

Live with it and have fun in all other activities,

Erik