@ProTruckDriver, Nice article but it's too late for me as I updated my IMac with the Apple updates Saturday and I didn't think of not updating my Mac OS to Ventura....Oh well everything so far is good except I lost my Blue Tooth Logitech Mouse and had to get that back and running...

Very useful article for those not f as military Roth upgrade tips and options. I always keep a list of the Mac App Store weblinks for each macOS release so I can download and install any version without being forced to the latest by software update

Great article. I have done this as well. But caution, auto update will still try to push you to Ventura after this update. 

But you can use Terminal and block a macOS.

For Ventura you would enter the following in Terminal once logged in as an Admin user :

softwareupdate --ignore “macOS Ventura”

Good article here about this sort of thing : 

https://www.howtoisolve.com/turn-off-turn-on-automatic-software-update-on-macos-mojave/

Just scroll down to the ‘Stop Auto Updating macOS on Mac using Terminal command’ section.

Some people find that command on it’s own doesn't work so you can try something like this :

sudo /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --ignore "MacOS Ventura"

Oh, worth mentioning that if you want to reset software updates you’ve ignored, just run this command :

sudo softwareupdate --reset-ignored

Also, sadly if you are already running Big Sur or later, the --ignore command has been deprecated.
But it’s a good one to use on Macs running macOS Catalina or earlier.