installing packages from debian cds
 

I successfully installed a few programs on Ubuntu using some of the 14 Debian cds. I scanned the cds using Synaptic. Some programs would not install. Some programs could not find dependencies. I believe that is because the when some Debian packages for Ubuntu have different names.

try using apt

to search for packages
apt-cache search <package name>

to install the package
apt-get install <package name>

regards

Supposedly there's some small differences between ubuntu and normal debian packages, so it's safer to stick with ubuntu specific repositories and install using apt. Is there something specific you're looking for not in the repositories? If so you might want to make sure you have the all the sources enabled, especially the multiverse ones. There's an example sources file here