It isn't hard to use an optimus card with Debian or most other distros nowadays you just need to install bumblebee (wheezy-backports for debian) with that you get improved battery life.
I personally don't get GPU drivers breaking the computer but I don't use nvidias drivers I use nouveau but I also use Debian so a distro like Arch (which is more prone to packages breaking systems) might be much worse.
I personally don't get GPU drivers breaking the computer but I don't use nvidias drivers I use nouveau but I also use Debian so a distro like Arch (which is more prone to packages breaking systems) might be much worse.