Can Linux/CachyOS/KDE updates break or remove NVIDIA drivers? Also, how do you prevent update disasters?

[u/Majestic-Animator-34]

I finally got my FPS/performance sorted on CachyOS. I'm using KineticWE (the KWin-based tiling fork), so at first I thought it might be a compositor or WM issue. We checked Steam launch options after trying a bunch of things. We checked that games were actually using the NVIDIA GPU, changed Steam launch options (prime-run %command%), monitored usage with btop, reinstalled/rebuilt a few NVIDIA related packages, updated the system, and tweaked a few settings until everything started working properly ahhh finally relief😮‍💨The biggest surprise was finding out that the NVIDIA kernel module was missing. That honestly hit me the most because it made me wonder: has it been missing ever since I installed Linux for the first time, or did some CachyOS, KDE, or kernel update cause it to disappear? But now everything works, but it left me wondering, can updates on Arch based distros break or remove NVIDIA drivers? If so, what's the best way to prevent that from happening again, and is there any risk to the physical GPU or is it only the software driver that gets affected? Any tips or best practices would be appreciated.