Amston Lake / Alder Lake-N (Atom x7433RE) with IgH EtherCAT — kernel version exp

Hello all,I'm specifying the controller for LinuxCNC as EtherCAT master via IgH/EtherLab, CiA 402 servo drives, 1 kHz servo loop.. Two industrial box PCs are shortlisted, both built on Intel Atom x7433RE (Amston Lake / Alder Lake-N):

• ASRock Industrial iEP-5020G — 2 × i210-IT + 1 × i226-IT
• IBASE AGS104T — 2 × i226-IT

One of the vendors has just told me that Intel specifies kernel 6.18 or later for the Amston Lake platform, and points at Intel's RT kernel overlay (linux-image-6.18rt-intel) which targets Ubuntu. Debian 13 ships 6.12, and as far as I can tell so does the LinuxCNC Debian 13 PREEMPT_RT ISO. Before I commit to hardware I'd rather learn from people who've actually done this than find out on the bench.Questions:

1. Is anyone running LinuxCNC + IgH EtherCAT on Amston Lake or Alder Lake-N (x7433RE, x7835RE, N97, N100, N150)? Which distro and kernel?
2. Does the "6.18 or later" requirement actually bite on a 6.12 RT kernel, or is the gap mainly graphics/TCC/TSN enablement rather than boot, Ethernet and serial? I'd expect the i210/i226 drivers to be long-since mainline, but I don't want to assume.
3. IgH native NIC drivers vs generic — On a recent kernel, do ec_igb / ec_e1000e still build, or are people falling back to the generic driver? If generic, what did it cost in worst-case jitter?
4. i210-IT vs i226-IT for the master port. I've seen the i210 preferred here for worst-case timing. With both available on the same box, is that still the recommendation, or has the i226 situation improved?
5. Real latency numbers welcome — latency-histogram max on the servo thread, under load, at 1 kHz, on any Alder Lake-N class machine.
6. If you did run a newer RT kernel on Debian, did you build it yourself or use a repo, and did anything in the LinuxCNC/IgH build need patching?

I'll post my own results back here once hardware is on the bench — latency histograms, IgH timing, and whatever I learn about the kernel question — in case it's useful to the next person choosing one of these boxes.

I'll be honest, AI is helping me build this machine. I am not as knowledgeable as this post makes me seem - but please dont hold that against me.  I really would like some assistance rather than spending hours on a new machine only to find out it won't work for me.

Some general information:
The RT kernel in Debian has a linux base, initramfs-tools, and kmod dependencies, all in appropriate versions. These dependencies have their dependencies, etc.
This means you can install a foreign kernel package, but something may work incorrectly or be unstable.
If sources are available, a better solution is to compile a new kernel, although this may not be possible, due a other causes...
6.18 itself shouldn't be a problem, because Trixie has kernel 7.1 in the backports, so you can try.

Thanks — that's very helpful. Agreed on not mixing Intel's Ubuntu-built package into Debian; "installs but might be subtly unstable" is the worst case for a machine running multi-day jobs. I hadn't understood backports were already that far ahead. linux-image-rt-amd64 is there, so I'll stay on Debian 13 and take the kernel from backports.

That moves questions elsewhere:

Does the IgH master still build its native NIC drivers on a 6.18 or 7.x kernel? ec_igb and ec_e1000e are patched against specific kernel versions and have historically lagged mainline.

Do the native drivers still compile on a recent backports kernel, or is everyone on the generic driver now?
If generic — what does it cost in worst-case jitter at 1 kHz? and is generic-driver EtherCAT running in production machines, or is it considered bench-only?

Anyone here Amston Lake / Alder Lake-N (x7433RE, N97, N100) with LinuxCNC?

If you were to install Debian Forky (aka testing), you get the 7.1 kernel. You should be able to install Linuxcnc direct but it may not be the latest version. You can install the LinuxCNC repos by running a bash script mentioned in the docs here which would be preferred as it keeps you current
linuxcnc.org/docs/stable/html/getting-st...th_preempt_rt_kernel 

Then install Linuxcnc with 
sudo apt install linuxcnc-uspace linuxcnc-uspace-dev

Anyway, that is how I would do it. The pre-release versions of Debian are rock solid in my experience. I don't like using backports. Never have used them.

rodw wrote:

I don't like using backports. Never have used them.
 

"I don't use it" and "I don't like it" are not substantive arguments.
The problem is that there are newer versions of the libraries in the newer release. First of all, it is about Python, in which the authors constantly change or remove something, so even relatively new programs (from a year or two ago) do not want to run, or some of their functions do not work.
However, backports repositories are optional, you can activate them, install only what you need and then turn them off again.

tuxcnc wrote:

rodw wrote:

I don't like using backports. Never have used them.
 
"I don't use it" and "I don't like it" are not substantive arguments.
The problem is that there are newer versions of the libraries in the newer release. First of all, it is about Python, in which the authors constantly change or remove something, so even relatively new programs (from a year or two ago) do not want to run, or some of their functions do not work.
However, backports repositories are optional, you can activate them, install only what you need and then turn them off again.

The reason I don't like backports is it can land you in dependency hell as you point out. That's my substantive argument.
I've been in this position needing a later kernel to support my hardware. Today, I would either compile the kernel and be done with it or use apt pinning to be very selective on what packages I obtain from unstable.