The latest NVIDIA drivers (576+ I think?) are totally broken on Ubuntu 22.04 variants and seem to require 24+. That was my experience anyway, I tried everything I could to get it to work, but PopOS would never boot under those drivers unless I upgraded to the alpha builds on Ubuntu 24. Forced me to switch to Fedora in the end (I needed those drivers for work) which worked seamlessly.
Ubuntu releases LTS versions every two years. I jump from LTS to LTS by simple `do-release-upgrade` command. Takes about 30 minutes. And I only upgrade after the dust settles, i.e. after 3-4 months of the release.
Mint also releases upgrades regularly. I suggest upgrading regularly.