Subversion: A Poor Man's Vault (and a nice one at that)
Suversion doesn't have the UI bells and whistles of, say, Vault or Perforce. It only does commit-merge mode and it takes a little more time (but no SQL Server) to set up. Other than that I've been relatively please so far.
Working with Vault and svn this year has really made me wonder how it is VSS is the best that's come out of Redmond. I know there's talk of this changing--and I hope it does.
Working with primarily Microsoft tools and relationships, it's anthema to start talking about things besides VSS. Just went through this today. But, the simple truth is VSS sucks for distributed source control (without third-party overhauls), it's near irresponsible to use it in that context (imo).
The TortoiseSVN installation guide makes geting svn up and running a flat-out snap, including SSL and SSPI. Highly recommended.
We'll see how svn holds up under further review, definitely quite promising--and TortoiseSVN seems to be strides ahead of where TortoiseCVS was last time I used it.