• The course has two textbooks. Do we need both of them?

Yes, they cover different parts of the course.

• What is the reason for using the STORK Modula 2 kernel in the course? Modula 2 is obsolete and nobody is using STORK any longer.

The reason for using STORK in the lectures is to be able to show how a real-time kernel really is implemented, e.g., to show how a scheduler looks like internally and how semaphores and monitors can be implemented. Since STORK is very simple this is possible. Other open-source kernels are typically written in C and are much more complex. You are required to understand the STORK code examples. You are not required to do any Modula 2 programming.