Do you (or anyone else) know if this is related to that famous clip of Linus Torvalds saying "fuck you" to nvidia? I get the impression that nvidia has not prioritized linux at all really over the decades.

I don’t know about the anecdote really. But Unix ABI is only stable for the userspace. Anything kernel side is not. So that means recompilation when things changes. So most drivers are in source code form in the kernel, or at least provide shims to firmware. AMD and Intel drivers are part of the kernel, nvidia’s are not. So every updates, you’re praying the the stars align and your card can be used and does not crash the system.