I take it you haven't actually used the tool that was mentioned in the comment you replied to, namely git-svn? My use of svn to interface with projects using Subversion has essentially entirely been replaced by git-svn, and I can say it is essentially impossible for someone who has used it to not realize that at least offline now works like git. Taking a step back: at some point what you run on the server is just a storage format; unless you used some of the more advanced Subversion features (at which point you might actually like using it), it generally maps pretty directly to git semantics, at which point essentially all other functionality differences are mere porcelain.