I've bricked multiple systems just running apt install on the Nvidia drivers. I have no idea how, but I run the installation, everything works fine, and then when I reboot I can't even boot.
That was years ago, but it happened multiple times and I've been very cautious ever since.
Interesting. I've never had that issue (~15 years experience) but I always had CPUs with graphics drivers. Do you think that might be it? The danger zone was always at `startx` and never before. (I still buy CPUs with graphics drivers because I think it is always good to have a fallback and hey, sometimes I want to sacrifice graphics for GPU compute :)
That was years ago, but it happened multiple times and I've been very cautious ever since.