SUMMARY
I am running Kubuntu 22.10, everything up to date. As soon as I install any (proprietary) nvidia driver, I cannot boot into a graphical system anymore.

SYSTEM INFO
Kubuntu 22.10
Kernel 5.19.0-1021-lowlatency
GPU: GeForce GTX 1660
DE: Plasma 5.25.5 (X11)

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
When I boot normally, using the nouveau driver, everything works. That is, except for games that apparently require the proprietary driver.
As soon as I install any nvidia driver (I tried nvidia-driver-525 and -515), I can't boot into the desktop. I am thrown into the boot screen with a message saying 

nvidia-gpu 0000:06:00.3: i2c timeout error e0000000

This however seems (according to other posts I've seen) not to be the source of the problem. Iirc, I have seen this screen a couple of times before, but then the DE still loaded.

REASON FOR BREAK: The system started to behave this way when I installed a kernel upgrade some time ago. On the reboot after that, my system did not boot. I "solved" it by opening tty (Ctrl+Alt+F2) and uninstalling the nvidia packages from there. I cannot tell for sure, but I might have accidentally rebooted my PC before all the kernel upgrades succeeded, I don't remember.

I have so far always been able to get back to the current semi-functional state without an nvidia driver by uninstalling all nvidia-related packages through tty.

ATTEMPTED SOLUTION(S)

I have tried different ways to install the driver, including apt and ubuntu-drivers. The kubuntu-driver-manager utility does not allow me to select a driver for some reason, it prints python errors to the terminal, but that's probably a different issue.

All tools report the same driver versions, e.g. for nvidia-driver-525: VERSION 525.105.17-0ubuntu0.22.10.1

I have currently no packages matching *nvidia* installed (I did apt purge) . My windows dualboot reports that the GPU works as expected.

I tried apt --reinstalling the linux-headers and then install the driver, didn't change anything.

FURTHER IDEAS

Are there any ways I can easily get back to a previous kernel to try if that's the issue?

Does it make a difference through which system tool I install the driver? (apt / ubuntu-drivers / kubuntu-driver-manager [broken!])

Should I try installing the driver through the NVIDIA homepage? The version code is the same (525.105.17)