how to install R 4.4

is there a way to get R 4.4 on linux mint with ubuntu 24.04?

I allowed upgrade of packages and that overwrote my 4.4 with 4.5 and
now i have a huge list of packages, some of which are difficult to
install to deal with.

following the instructions on
https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/fullREADME.html

To obtain the latest R 4.4 packages, add an entry like

deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu noble-cran40/

but that gave me 4.5 again. so, 1) how do I get the 4.4 and 2) how do I
stop the automatic upgrades
thanks everybody
stephen