Subversion

Setup under Windows

Download Subversion from
http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=8100

Follow
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001093.html
(take spaces and especially positions of '=' very serious!)
if you want a svn-server started as a service each time you start your computer (lacking a svn server at CEPE you might want that) and use a graphical interface to svn.

Setup under Ubuntu Linux

Follow http://odyniec.net/articles/ubuntu-subversion-server/

Usage

Cheat sheet for usage of subversion on the command prompt:
http://www.abbeyworkshop.com/howto/misc/svn01/
Rather than doing things like
svn <somecommand> HTTP://<somewebhost>/<somepath> (your own svnserver is NOT available in this way with current configuration)
you can issue 
svn <somecommand> SVN://localhost/<somepath>
thanks to the configuration described in the codinghorror.com link above (capitals are for emphasis).

Extensive Documentation of Subversion:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ 

Use VC in Emacs:

See: http://www.credmp.org/?p=65
Or more extensive: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Version-Control.html#Version-Control

Starting a New Project

svnadmin create <repositoryfolder e.g. "~/svn/repos">/project_name
edit ~/svn/repos/project_name/conf/svnserve.conf
     uncomment the 'password-db' line and make it point to your password file. I have
     one that is common to all my private projects in ~/svn/
svn mkdir -m "add trunk" svn://localhost/project_name/trunk

Now either:
    svn checkout svn://localhost/project_name/trunk
    svn add file1 file2 file3
    svn commit -m "this is project so and so starting"
or:
    svn import .../already_existing_project_folder svn://localhost/project_name/trunk -m "this is project so and so being imported"

    svn checkout svn://localhost/project_name/trunk