Its probably more the things like when you happen to update in one of those times where the package manager has nvidia modules built for a different kernel version than what you just updated to. Sure you can use dkms but its often not the default, and not everyone can figure out what to do when they reboot and it hangs before reaching desktop. I know someone who decided they hated Linux in general after this.
Probably these days a new user wanting mainly Linux gaming with minimal tinkering could just use something like the bazzite nvidia image and never have any issues and if the open source driver ever reaches parity with the proprietary one it will probably just be swapped in and work in an update. Other distros as long as the maintainers aren’t dumbfucks it should also be fine. In the early days of nvidia on linux Ubuntu fucked me up the ass a few times before I learned about using dkms for nvidia drivers or dkms at all really.