posted 10 years ago
To me, the major difference between Git and SVN is philosophical. Whereas Subversion essentially stores a whole set of changed files - and applies an arbitrary version number to that set - the essence of Git is in its idea of only storing changes.
So it is a difference between making an entire copy and keeping track of only the Delta. For this reason merging and branching is easier because git has the ability to "reassemble" the series of changes that led to any particular state (commit; a point in time) of the project.
Additionally, I have a distaste for the way in which SVN leaves those 'tracking' files (hidden ".svn") all over the filesystem as a means to its internal housekeeping.