I found bazaar to be very easy to pick up. It doesn't require a server of any sort -- it's completely Python based, and the source control is kept within a ".bzr" folder at the top directory of the tree. It supports branching, merging, tagging, etc. You can also work just with local files on your filesystem, or you can "push" your changes to a remote server over ssh, ftp, http, or a bzr-specific server. Backing up your repository would be as simple as copying your .bzr folder, if you have the repository set up to not depend on the external files (bzr init-repo --no-trees
).