My problem with Subversion is that it only really works well for trivial cases where you have linear and non-overlapping changes. It's great for configuration m

My problem with Subversion is that it only really works well for trivial cases where you have linear and non-overlapping changes. It's great for configuration management, but not much else. If you have more than 1 person doing simultaneous changes to a repository which might overlap, SVN becomes a pain to use because its merge handling is basically "Oh, there's a conflict. Here is the whole mess, good luck!" and you lose access to all the tools SVN provides for normal use. Git (and hg) treat merges as an everyday thing, and a merge conflict does not leave you unable to do basic things such as commit or stage changes with the index, which is a huge help when resolving large conflicts.