If you are running an Linux system, there's packages that make it quite simple. I think that if you do a server install on Red Hat or its relatives (Fedora, CentOS, etc.) that it installs by default.
I think under Ubuntu - at least the install I did - you had to install subversion manually using apt-get, synaptic or whatever your favorite tool is. The package is named either "subversion" or "svn", I forget which, so try both.
The same package supports the client and server subversion software. Once it's installed, create a repository using the instruction manual as a guide, open up the firewall if you need to, and
you should be in business.
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.