I haven't used Debian in awhile (I have potato 2.2 r2), and am using Slackware 9.0 right now.

I know I can install Debian with just the first cd, but is there a list of what packages are on which disk? I don't want to download 7 cd's (which I do at work because of bandwidth), but I don't want to install too much from the net at home because I'm on dialup.

So, the question is, should I download just disk 1, or the first 3 or so? Potato was on 3 binary disks, so are the other 4 really obscure packages?

I want a fairly complete desktop selection, like would be available from slack, RH, mdk, etc.

Well, I don't know about the exact contents, but they are ordered by popularity, so if your needs are not very special, you should get yourself quite a long way forward with first 3 disks.

Also note that the software in the stable distribution is somewhat old for desktop use, so you might want to upgrade quite lot of the packages or burn yourself an testing or unstable cd.