On Jul 5, 2022, at 18:55, Stephen Morris <samorris@netspace.net.au> wrote:
[   13.973636] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.

It’s this line where the kernel notes why it is tainted.  Somewhere in the nvidia kmod C code, there is a line that looks like this:

MODULE_LICENSE("NVIDIA"); 

The kernel will print out the aforementioned kernel message if it isn’t one of the open licenses defined in the kernel.  There’s more about tainted kernels here:


There are a variety of reasons why the kernel would be tainted, but in this case it is because a proprietary kernel module was loaded. It doesn’t have anything to do with signed kernel modules or secure boot. 

-- 
Jonathan Billings