"Don't know anything" isn't accurate. It's not as if I don't follow the issues in question, read people's opinions, articles, commentary, and so on. It's just that I haven't used git myself, yet, aside from checkouts.

My point is merely that, if I were given the choice today to learn a version control system for my own use (like the poster), I would pick git because that seems to be where things are going. svn works well enough for me and I don't see any need to chase after the buzz, but sooner or later I too will probably get around to figuring out the ins and outs of git.

Either one is obviously a vast improvement over no version control.

Ah. I'd say checkouts counts as using it, FWIW.

(Mercurial is really good, too.)