subversion is a modern replacement to CVS. CVS was originally a bunch of wrapper shell scripts around diff3(1) and RCS, and is showing it's age.

Subversion has a "changeset", a commit is one atomic operation that either completes or fails. CVS has one operation per file. Subversion can deal with files being renamed and/or moved, cvs can't. Subversion can versioncontrol directories, CVS can't. Of the numerous CVS replacements, Subversion? is quite possibly the most similar to CVS in commandline interface and has a stable support community, making it a good choice if you wish to move from CVS.

Notes:

• to flag a file as executable use svn propset svn:executable on filename

See also: GnuArch