This is not the consensus recommendation for the bloat-less install most like, but what I did for my first Debian install was:

I got all the DVD (3) but didn't need more than the first.

I did installgui --tasks=standard, gnome-desktop, kde-desktop

and that did the whole install off the first DVD. When asked if I wanted to use a network mirror I said no as I wanted to just get it all installed quickly direct from the DVD.

That way, you'll be asked which, Gnome or KDE, you want as default and at least in KDE get its nice wizard that will start you off nicely.

I chose the KDM manager for the login manager as I started with KDE first and when asked set it as default. When I switched over to Gnome I did

su -
/etc/init.d/kdm stop
dpkg-reconfigure kdm

Choose gdm,then
dpkg-reconfigure gdm

Choose gdm

Then reboot and choose Gnome in the session list. Do the opposite when returning to KDE. Don't need to do this, but it changes all the stuff in update-alternatives --config to either the KDE programs or the Gnome programs without me having to do it for each program. Quite nice!

You can just switch back and forth from either kdm or gdm when you bootup as they both work with, er, both. But doing what I did sets all the stuff to the appropriate programs. Less bother overall.

You get a nice sampling of software to play with. Learn to adjust your /etc/apt/sources.list to the appropriate installation sources and to use aptitude from the command line for a nice continuously upgraded Lenny (testing) Debian distribution that never needs formatting and reinstalling when a new stable version is released. Keep things at testing and you'll be ahead of just about any distro out there.

Or, stay with Stable and just get security updates and fixes but be really, um, stable! (Everything works, very little bugs.)

Learn about debian-multimedia.org to get your mp3's, ripping, dvd stuff going.