Software development for small, real-time and resource constrained, embedded systems is becoming increasingly complex. To be able to guarantee robustness and reliability, the underlying infrastructure should not be based upon ad hoc solutions. In this paper we identify three key features of a minimalistic Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), and presents the run-time system of Timber, a reactive deadlinedriven programming language. We scrutinize the functionalities of the run-time system in the light of real-time requirements, and emphasize the importance of integrating an adequate notion of time, both semantically in the programming interface as well as part of the run-time system.