The SVN system always has two components: a server and a client. The server manages the central master copy of your projects in a database that is referred to as the "repository". The client software installed on each user's computer manages the local copy of the project that the user works on, and synchronizes it with the master copy on the server.
This synchronization is not continuous: Users would generally synchronize once before working, to get the latest changes from the central repository, and once after working, to add their changes to the repository.
The Subversion server manages your central project storage repository and is normally installed on a central server computer, which can be accessed via your local network or the Internet. It can be installed on the same computer where you do your work, but that is not recommended.
Your SVN server does not have to be a Windows computer. There are versions available for Linux, Unix and Mac OS X servers as well as for Windows, and you should use those if your central server is already on one of those platforms.  See here for a central list of SVN server distributions, but note that support for SVN is becoming less widespread and some of the sources listed may no longer be in service. In particular, all the Collabnet offerings are no longer available and their links point to a different company with no SVN support.
If you are running a Windows server we currently recommend the Visual SVN distribution, which is free for commercial use for up to 15 users and provides easily configurable and secure local and remote access via https://.
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This is the software that each user installs on their computer to communicate with the SVN server. It provides the interface that Help+Manual interacts with and some clients also include integration in Windows Explorer so that you can perform operations there directly. The best clients are also free and open source.
Please use Tortoise SVN as your Subversion client
There are a number of SVN clients for Windows, but we strongly recommend using Tortoise SVN. This will ensure maximum compatibility and minimum problems.
See this guide for a more detailed introduction to Tortoise SVN.
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