How often do you have to update your nvidia drivers? Do any patches ever mess them up?

The nVidia drivers are built for the current kernel version, so any time that the kernel version is changed then the nVidia kernel module needs to be rebuilt.
Also the nVidia driver creates symlinks that overwrite libraries provided by the mesa and X packages. So any time that mesa or X updated, then the nVidia driver needs to be reinstalled.

Within Slackware -stable , the mesa, X and kernel version do not change, so any patches applied to -stable should not require reinstalling the nVidia driver.

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Running 13.1 x64, no multilib. I update nvidia driver as little as possible. Last time was when I updated the kernel to 2.6.36, the old one would not build, so I pulled the latest at the time: NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-260.19.21.run, and it worked well with 2.6.36.x and with 2.6.37 during the last few days. There is no security concern I am aware of, so I don't fix what is not broken.

I agree with allend, I usually update the nvidia drivers along with the kernel, unless the nvidia drivers are release in quick succession and fix many bugs. And, indeed, I do try NOT to update the nvidia drivers, because I've found it is more likely that new bugs will appear rather than older ones being fixed.

Sorry for the title. I'm just an old Bogart fan and couldn't resist.

I have old boxen still running Slack 12.2 through numerous kernel and system upgrades (from v10) that has had the same GeForce 6600GT in it. I only rarely updated the driver and stopped a few years ago, only running the nVidia installer whenever a newer kernel was adopted. It's generally better to only upgrade for some specific reason, not just because something new came out. It isn't at all uncommon that support for older hardware dwindles down to an afterthought after enough hardware upgrade cycles. In fact it isn't uncommon that the initial software is more aggressive and later versions are "toned down" to be compatible with bargain basement versions of hardware.

Thanks, all.