This is a response to drbrain's review, because I think he's confused about a number of issues.
* Merge-tracking (a la p4 integrate) is coming in svn 1.5, and is already mostly working on the trunk code. You can test drive it today.
* 'svn diff' now natively supports -u, -b, -w, and other things.
* You *can* set the default diff arguments in your ~/.subversion/config file.
* "Feels" slower? Some commands are slower, some are much faster. It's all about amortizing total speed over various commands. Try timing 'svn diff' vs. 'cvs diff'. (Hint: one hits the network, one doesn't.)
* 'svn log -v -r123' tells you everything about one changeset.
* repo corruption? I don't buy it. working copy corruption has happened before though, so yes, that needs some work.