Can I use Debian DVD's to install on Ubuntu

[Christopher Lees]

On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 04:58 +0000, squareyes wrote:
> Hi all,
> I have a 3 DVD set of Debian 4 "Etch", and was wondering if I can use 
> them to
> install applications like Scribus, Inkscape etc. on Ubuntu 7.04 ?
> 
> I have friends who have Ubuntu running on machines with no Internet access,
> and thought if I could add the DVD's to their (mine too, have slow dial up)
> apt.sources list and use them as repositories. Would save them bringing 
> their boxes here
> and installing via my slow dialup.
> 
> Are there any problems that may rear their ugly heads.

Using them as an actual Apt source is likely to be troublesome - you
could end off running half Debian and half Ubuntu, which is no fun for
anyone.

If it's only a couple of applications, you could manually open the
packages with File Roller and place the files from data.tar.gz manually
into the folders they would belong in. You would still need to download
the dependencies from the Ubuntu repos, but even though the programs are
linked against the Debian versions of the libraries they should still
work on Ubuntu.

I'd only recommend this for a small handful of programs, otherwise it
gets too cumbersome, and there's always a small possibility of breakage.