Setting up a distributed version control system
There are several DVCS around: Bazaar, Mercurial and Git. What I am going to cover here, can be accomplished by each of them. In my examples I refer to Bazaar. You will find notes on how to install the software on the homepage of each system. It is always very easy. To use the DVCS open a terminal on Linux and Mac OS X or the command line interpreter under Windows and change into the directory where you want to write your novel.