title: Why isn't every OS real-time?
body: <p>I've heard nothing but good things about RTOSs--they give the programmer greater control over the scheduler so as to e.g. avoid priority inversion, their timing is more consistent, better multitasking.  But all standard desktop setups use OSs that aren't real-time.  So there must be some tradeoffs to using an RTOS, what are they?</p>